For Pakistan, Turkey is one of its closest countries: an ally, a partner, a country whose history is better known here than that of many others. But even a close country may not be known in its entirety. Turkey’s secularism is neither a borrowing nor a compromise, but the principle on which Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the republic and which was incorporated into its constitution in 1937. For seventy years, it determined what Turkish schools, universities and the civil service looked like. For the past two decades, Turkey has been governed by a different tradition, a religious-conservative one, and beyond its borders the first tradition is not always remembered. In autumn 2026, it was brought back into focus by a dispute sparked by Azerbaijan, which approved uniform requirements for school dress in September.
The decision concerned only public schools, but it was discussed far beyond them — most loudly in Turkey, where a presidential adviser, lawmakers from the ruling party and protesters outside the Azerbaijani consulate in Istanbul called on Baku to reconsider it. For Pakistan, where the hijab is an everyday feature of school life, this reaction is understandable. But it reflects only one of the two traditions that coexist in Turkey. The other deserves no less attention.
In substance, the decision was narrower than the reaction to it might suggest. The headscarf was not included among the elements of the school uniform; the regulation concerns only public schools and only uniforms: universities, workplaces, streets and mosques remain unaffected. The same document permits national dress at school events. The country’s highest religious authority, the Caucasus Muslims Office, called the hijab an important religious obligation — and stated in the same declaration that citizens have no right to oppose decisions of the state. Azerbaijan is a secular state under its Constitution and a Muslim country in terms of its population, and these two characteristics have never been considered contradictory there.
The Turkish Republic was founded on the same principle — and although restrictions on headscarves in universities and government institutions have been lifted under the current government, the tradition on which the republic was built has not disappeared. It is represented by the Kemalist opposition, a significant part of academia, the judiciary and the military — and by a substantial part of society for whom the secular state remains part of national identity, rather than a rejection of faith.
It was from this Turkey that different assessments of Azerbaijan’s decision emerged. Theologian and columnist Cemil Kılıç urged Azerbaijan to ‘carefully preserve its secular identity’. Professor Aygün Attar, former rector of Giresun University and a member of the Security and Foreign Policy Council under the President of Turkey, suggested that Azerbaijan should not be judged ‘exclusively through the prism of Turkey’. Ömer Faruk Kocatepe, an international relations scholar and associate professor at Turkey’s National Defence University, stressed: ‘Azerbaijan is an independent state with its own history and political and social characteristics. Our brotherhood stands above current political events, disagreements and debates.’
Just how alive this tradition remains was demonstrated by Northern Cyprus, where, six months before the events in Azerbaijan, the same dispute unfolded in the opposite direction. In April 2025, the government of the Turkish Cypriot administration, which is close to Ankara, allowed female students in upper secondary school to wear headscarves in public schools. The response was the largest protests in Turkish Cypriot history: on 8 April, around thirteen thousand people marched through northern Nicosia under the slogan ‘Cyprus is secular and will remain secular’; in May, a general strike brought the north of the island to a standstill. President Erdoğan sharply condemned the protesters and promised to visit. In September, the Constitutional Court of the Turkish Cypriot administration overturned the permission following a lawsuit by the teachers’ union, on the grounds that only parliament had the authority to make such a decision. In October, Turkish Cypriots elected the leader of the secular opposition, Tufan Erhürman, as president.
In other words, Turkish Cypriots — a Turkic people, Muslims living under Turkey’s protection and with its financial support — defended secular schooling in defiance of Ankara. Six months later, Azerbaijan made the same decision and faced the same criticism from the same circles. In both cases, the dispute took place within the Turkish world itself — over what public schools should be like and who has the right to decide.
Baku’s response, delivered on 13 October by the ruling New Azerbaijan Party, addressed precisely this dispute. The party recalled that the formula ‘one nation, two states’ means one nation and two independent states, and gives neither the right to interfere in the other’s internal affairs; that Azerbaijan is a secular state under its Constitution, and that the same principle is enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey; and that using the headscarf as an instrument of political manipulation ‘serves neither the unity of the Turkish people nor the solidarity of the Muslim world as a whole’.
The secular tradition in Turkey is neither a thing of the past nor merely an opposition position, but part of what Turkey remains: its Constitution, its universities, its military, millions of its citizens. Azerbaijan arrived at the secular state by its own path and reached the same conclusion: faith belongs to the individual, school belongs to everyone. In this sense, the autumn controversy is not a confrontation between Ankara and Baku. It continues a debate Turkey has been having with itself for a century: about the place of religion in the state, about who schools belong to, about Atatürk’s legacy. Azerbaijan’s decision merely carried that debate beyond Turkey’s borders — and Baku found both its own position and supporters among Turks themselves. For readers in Pakistan, the debate offers another perspective on the different traditions that coexist within a close partner, Turkey.
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