Footage of a protest outside Azerbaijan’s embassy in Ankara over alleged restrictions on the hijab was first circulated by a media platform linked to the Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, according to Azerbaijani media reports.
Musavat.com investigated the platform, Köklü Değişim Medya, after it published the first footage of the demonstration on its X account, Turkustan.az reported.
According to the investigation, Köklü Değişim Medya and Köklü Değişim Dergisi belong to the Turkish representation of Hizb ut-Tahrir.
Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose name translates from Arabic as the “Party of Liberation”, is an international pan-Islamist and fundamentalist political organisation founded in Jerusalem in 1953 by Palestinian Islamic scholar Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani.
Initially active in East Jerusalem, the organisation subsequently expanded its activities to dozens of countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Egypt, Tunisia and Türkiye.
According to publicly available sources, Hizb ut-Tahrir differs from other Islamist movements through its extensive ideological framework and its detailed vision of the political system it seeks to establish.
The organisation is banned in several countries, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, China and Uzbekistan. Members have been imprisoned in a number of these countries.
Hizb ut-Tahrir is also officially banned in Azerbaijan.
The protest outside Azerbaijan’s embassy in Ankara was held over claims of a hijab ban. The reported links between the platform that first circulated the footage and Hizb ut-Tahrir have drawn attention to the organisation behind the initial coverage of the demonstration.
The available information does not establish whether Hizb ut-Tahrir organised the protest itself or had any direct involvement in arranging it.