BAKU: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan arrived in Azerbaijan on Sunday for Victory Day celebrations, hoping to ease an unusually public rift between two close regional allies.

Tensions flared in September, when Baku revised school uniform regulations to prohibit additions deemed incompatible with secular education, effectively barring Islamic headscarves from classrooms.

Erdogan’s government has dismantled restrictions on hijabs in Turkiye.

Baku’s move sparked protests at home and drew criticism from Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), including presidential adviser Oktay Saral, who demanded that Azerbaijan reverse the restrictions.

Aliyev’s ruling party, Yeni Azerbaijan, denounced such comments as “interference in Azerbaijan’s internal affairs.”

Baku also declared 31 Turkish nationals, including an opposition lawmaker and party leaders, persona non grata over critical social media posts.

Erdogan subsequently dismissed Saral, but Aliyev stayed away from the October 30 summit of Turkic leaders in Ankara — despite a personal invitation from Erdogan. Instead, he sent Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov.

On Sunday, Erdogan arrived in Azerbaijn’s Fizuli district, which Baku recaptured in 2020 from Armenian separatist forces.

A guard of honor was lined up at the local airport, where Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva, welcomed Erdogan and his wife Emine, Azerbaijani media reported.

Erdogan is expected to hold a joint press conference with Aliyev later in the afternoon.

Ahead of his visit, Erdogan congratulated “dear brother” Aliyev, on Azerbaijan’s “great victory” in its 2020 war with Armenia.

Baku at the time retook part of the breakaway Karabakh region and surrounding districts, before seizing the rest of Karabakh in 2023.

In the letter, Erdogan expressed confidence that “Drawing strength from our unwavering bonds of friendship and brotherhood, founded on the principle of ‘One nation, two states,’ the two countries would continue to work in “close cooperation and solidarity.”

He said earlier that he hoped the trip would provide an opportunity to take “necessary steps.”

“There is no obstacle that the brotherhood between Turkiye and Azerbaijan cannot overcome,” he told reporters on Thursday.

‘Deeper rift’

Analysts say the quarrel also reflects deeper disagreements over Baku’s diplomatic independence and its close ties to Israel.

“Azerbaijan-Turkiye tensions stemmed from the fact that Baku does not see itself as the younger brother in this alliance and insists on relations between equal partners,” Elkhan Shahinoglu, head of the Baku-based Atlas Research Center, told AFP.

“The hijab dispute is a symptom of a deeper rift,” Gonul Tol, an analyst at the Washington-based Middle East Institute, wrote on X.

“Tensions have long simmered over a number of issues including Azerbaijan’s sovereignty, Ankara’s influence in Baku, diverging policies toward Israel, and Turkiye’s rapprochement with Armenia.”

Baku has forged strong military and economic ties with Israel, which supplied Azerbaijan with weapons during its 2020 war with Armenia over the breakaway Karabakh region.

This has angered Ankara, which has grown increasingly hostile toward Israel over the war in Gaza. Erdogan has accused the Jewish state of genocide.

Turkiye is also seeking to normalize relations with Armenia, whose border it closed in the 1990s in solidarity with Azerbaijan, while linking progress to Armenian-Azerbaijani peace efforts.

November 8 marks Azerbaijan’s capture of the city of Shusha in Karabakh during its war with Armenia, a victory achieved with Turkish backing.

The Turkic-speaking allies describe their relationship as “one nation, two states” and, despite the friction, remain closely bound by military and energy ties.

Turkiye serves as a key transit route for Azerbaijani oil and gas exports to Western markets.

An ex-Soviet republic, Azerbaijan is a mainly Shiite Muslim country, but after decades of Soviet rule it emerged as one of the most secular states in the Muslim world.