Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev will miss the Organization of Turkic States summit in Ankara on Friday, at which Turkiye takes over the organisation’s rotating chairmanship from Azerbaijan itself. Azerbaijani media reported that Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov will represent Baku, attributing the president’s absence to previously scheduled engagements, including presenting awards at the closing of the inaugural FIFA Under 15 World Cup and Festival in Baku. The absence comes despite a personal invitation from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in a telephone call on October 21.
The timing is what gives the absence its meaning. The two governments have spent October in a dispute that began when Azerbaijan amended its school uniform rules in September to prohibit clothing inconsistent with prescribed uniforms or secular education, a measure understood as restricting headscarves in schools. Erdogan’s chief presidential adviser Oktay Saral criticised the restrictions publicly on October 12; he left his post later in the month, saying he was stepping down on Erdogan’s instructions, and Middle East Eye reported that Baku had demanded his dismissal. Azerbaijan has barred 31 Turkish nationals, including journalists and political figures, from entering the country and issued arrest warrants for seven others over statements connected to the controversy.
Both sides are also performing normality. On Thursday Aliyev sent Erdogan a message congratulating Turkiye on the 103rd anniversary of the republic, describing the two countries as bound by genuine friendship and brotherhood and citing the 2021 Shusha Declaration, which elevated the relationship to a formal alliance. The summit itself, bringing together Turkiye, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, is expected to discuss trade, transport and energy cooperation and to adopt an Ankara Declaration, with the chairmanship handover now taking place at foreign minister level rather than between leaders.
Analysts quoted in the coverage locate the friction deeper than the headscarf row. Azerbaijani political analyst Arastun Orujlu told Meydan TV that tensions predate the dispute and identified Azerbaijan’s increasingly close ties with Israel as a major source, part of a wider Turkish Israeli competition for influence in the South Caucasus. No official on either side has connected the absence to the dispute, and Baku’s stated reason is a prior engagement. But allies do not usually need entry bans, arrest warrants and a sacrificed presidential adviser explained away in the same month, and the empty chair in Ankara will be read in both capitals as the dispute’s current measure.