The Political Costs of Ambiguous Rules on Hijab in Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan’s school uniform dispute has exposed a vulnerability in how Baku has managed religion over the last few decades. A regulation that never mentions the hijab has produced exclusions from classrooms, as well as arrests and an unusually public confrontation with political figures in allied Turkey. The danger for Baku lies in the progression from administrative discretion to a dispute over sovereignty. The fact that authorities treat families’ complaints as evidence of foreign interference risks giving outside actors even greater opportunities to claim that they represent Azerbaijani believers, something Baku has opposed since independence.

The mechanism began with Cabinet Decision No. 309, adopted on 21 September 2022. A separate decision on 6 October regulated teachers’ dress. The Baku education authority’s explanation prohibits students from wearing clothing containing elements incompatible with uniformity or secular education. Besides that, it assigns compliance questions to school pedagogical councils and makes parents responsible for observance. However, this regulation permits wearing national dress at designated cultural events. What requires interpretation is the clear distinction between allowed national self-expression and prohibited religious expression. For a family whose daughter is refused entry, the absence of an explicit hijab prohibition offers no protection. Supporters invoke a legitimate concern: that is, children should be free from facing coercion over religious dress. A ruling-party legislator defended the restrictions as protection for pupils whose might be shaped by their families. Yet excluding a child leaves an unanswered question: whether her clothing was or was not coerced. It penalise her access to education without responding to that question. Azerbaijan’s Constitution requires secular state education alongside guarantees of conscience and education. Invoking secularism alone is clearly not enough to settle how those obligations should be reconciled.

This conflict has a history. Galib Bashirov’s study of the 2010 controversy showed how the hijab became a means of defining national belonging through distinctions between national and foreign, modern and backward. Sofie Bedford and her co-authors subsequently explained how state-sponsored “Traditional Islam” extends political control over religious life. The present dispute exposes a concrete institutional problem: enforcement in schools generates deep grievances that authorities and the ruling party interpret as a challenge to sovereignty and, more specifically, to its secular character.

Mobilisation around religion receives significant meaning in Azerbaijan, considering how the authoritarian regime has limited the space for an independent civil society and how it abolished almost all political opposition. The persecution of political opponents, civic activists, and journalists has narrowed citizens’ opportunities for expressing their grievances through secular institutions. In such circumstances, religious connections and religious perception of justice can serve as a foundation for public action even under strict regulations by the regime. By the way, sincere religious commitment can go hand in hand with resistance to arbitrary political power, and defending the right to wear hijab can signify the defense of personal dignity and protection of the right to question the regime’s decisions. For this very reason, the dispute over school clothing can acquire a wider political significance, outside of mere religious demands. Explaining such consolidation merely through religious extremism or foreign interference obscures the authorities’ own role in its politicisation. Suppressing established channels of civic participation can strengthen precisely those forms of solidarity that the state subsequently portrays as threats.

The security response has added another layer to this problem. On 12 October, the Interior Ministry reported 37 detentions and alleged disruptions of public order. It also reported allegations of attempted arson. Such incidents require investigation, but they do not directly mean that all opposition is violent. On 16 October, Amnesty International reported detentions of peaceful critics alongside participants in violence. Conflating these categories allows a question about school access to become a test of political loyalty. That structure leaves room for incompatible accounts of the same policy. On 14 October, ruling-party board member Asif Asgarli denied a hijab ban, presenting school rules as uniform requirements and attributing contrary reports to foreign-directed provocation. A country can have no general hijab ban and still exclude girls from school. Collapsing that distinction shifts attention from what administrators have done to whose interests critics serve. Families must then seek redress in a debate in which their complaint itself can be treated as disinformation.

The foreign response shows why this transformation matters not only domestically, but also externally. Turkish presidential adviser Oktay Saral demanded a reversal of the regulation. Simultaneously, waves of criticism also came from Justice and Development Party (AKP) parliamentarians. Azerbaijan’s ruling party responded on 13 October by defending its constitutional order. It firmly stressed that “one nation, two states” means two independent states. The same statement promoted Islamic solidarity while denying any Muslim state authority to dictate to another. It also defended relations with Israel, exposing how quickly school exclusions can enter arguments over Azerbaijan’s wider foreign alignments. Baku wants solidarity without conceding jurisdiction over its domestic religious settlement. Turkish critics, meanwhile, can invoke an educational grievance without proposing any formal change to the alliance.

Iran illustrates a different distinction. Iran’s embassy rejected allegations of involvement in the protests. That denial does not resolve every question about foreign influence, but criticism, amplification, and orchestration are separate claims requiring separate evidence. Attributing a parent’s complaint to Tehran because it concerns Islamic practice erases domestic agency. It also risks strengthening foreign religious voices by presenting them as the principal alternative to the state.

The immediate evidence supports a dispute over the boundaries of allied influence, rather than a rupture with Ankara or any other foreign power. Aliyev received Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on 15 October. That meeting establishes continued high-level engagement, yet it leaves open the questions and controversies arising from how differently the two governments view the role of religion in their state affairs. The consequential question is whether public religious criticism begins to affect substantive cooperation, or remains a recurring political cost alongside it. The episode illustrates how even the closest alliances can become sources of diplomatic friction when expectations of solidarity collide with assertions of sovereignty.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Statecraft Institute.