Azerbaijan’s ruling New Azerbaijan Party (YAP) has criticised Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s adviser Oktay Saral for speaking out against Azerbaijan’s hijab ban in schools. It called on Turkey and its ruling party to respect Azerbaijan’s internal affairs.
Saral’s remarks on Monday came amid protests in Azerbaijan over the enforcement of school uniform rules affecting students who wear hijab. On 13 October, the YAP responded by accusing some Turkish media outlets and social media platforms, including pro-government sources, of disseminating false and biassed information about Azerbaijan.
The party’s statement appeared to respond to criticism from Turkey over the school uniform controversy.
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Saral described the refusal to allow hijab-wearing students to attend classes in Azerbaijan as unacceptable in a post on social media.
‘How can it be morally or legally justified to turn away a student at the school gate because she covers her head for religious reasons? The hijab is not an obstacle; it is a requirement of faith! The right to education must not be sacrificed to ideological impositions!’.
‘We expect Azerbaijan to reverse this mistake as soon as possible. Rather than putting obstacles in the way of young people’s futures, we should help them move forward. In this day and age, such an approach must never be allowed to prevail’.
In a statement published on Tuesday, the YAP decried what it called an ‘information campaign directed against Azerbaijan’. The party said it was ‘necessary’ for it to express its position now that Saral — ‘a person holding the status of chief adviser’ to Erdoğan, and other MPs of the ruling Turkish Justice and Development Party (AKP) had ‘joined such a campaign’.
The YAP has appeared to link Saral’s criticism of the dress code policy to criticism from Turkey of Azerbaijan’s ‘Islamophobia’ and ties with Israel.
In its statement, the party rejected criticism of Azerbaijani–Israeli relations, stressing that Baku supported Palestinian statehood under a two-state solution, with East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, and had provided financial and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.
It additionally said that Azerbaijan’s relations with the Islamic word are also ‘based not on any political conjuncture, but on the principles of mutual respect, equality, and solidarity’.
‘Our country’s contributions to strengthening Islamic solidarity are highly appreciated by Muslim states’, the YAP said.
This appears to be an indirect response to Erdoğan’s UN General speech in September, where he criticised restrictions on wearing hijab in schools, calling them ‘an attack on women’s most fundamental rights’ and linking the issue to ‘Islamophobia’. Erdoğan did not mention Azerbaijan by name, but many viewed the comments as being directed at Baku.
Returning to Saral’s comments, the YAP accused the adviser and Turkish MPs of making ‘populist and irresponsible statements without taking into account the essence of the issue’.
‘Such statements contradict the spirit of Azerbaijani–Turkish brotherly relations and may serve to create artificial tension in the public sphere’, the party said, adding that the state treats all religions equally.
It defended its apparent hijab ban by saying it derives from Azerbaijan’s secular policies, which are ‘also enshrined in the constitution of the republic of Turkey’.
‘The New Azerbaijan Party believes that representatives of the Justice and Development Party, especially persons holding senior state positions, should demonstrate political responsibility in their statements and respect the sovereignty, constitutional order, and internal affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan’, the party said.