Hijab Ban in Schools Sparks Rare Protests in Azerbaijan and Dispute with Turkey

Protests have erupted over laws that have led to students wearing hijabs being pushed out of schools.

By Rayhan Demytrie Caucasus reporter

"You're telling me, I can't come to school?" says a teenage girl wearing a navy blue Islamic headscarf who was caught on video challenging a staff member at the entrance to her school.

The footage, which has been widely shared on social media, shows a group of hijab-wearing girls standing behind her as she continues: "Why should I give up my religion?"

Last Monday, the Ministry of Education in Azerbaijan began enforcing new uniform rules, turning away female students wearing hijabs. Protests broke out outside public schools in the capital, Baku, and in several southern regions, including Masali and Jalilabad.

Protests are rare in this oil and gas producing country of 10.5 million people.

Azerbaijan is secular according to the constitution and the government strictly enforces it.

President Ilham Aliyev has been in power since 2003 and has little tolerance for dissent. Opposition politicians and many independent journalists are in prison.

Azerbaijan is stretched between two neighbors, Türkiye and Iran. Azerbaijanis belong to a group of Turkic nations that speak a language close to Turkish, and Turkey is its closest ally.

But like Iran to the south, Azerbaijan is predominantly Shia - more than 60 percent of its people identify as Shia Muslims, while most Turks are Sunni.

The Ministry of Interior announced that it had arrested 37 people on Monday who were trying to obstruct the laws and "grossly" violate public order.

The rules, passed on September 21, ban public schools from wearing clothing that contradicts the "principle of secularism in education." They do not call hijab. Similar instructions were extended to teachers on October 6.

In one video, students outside Balakhani School No. 69, outside Baku, hold a banner that reads: "Hijab does not prevent anyone from learning."

Shahiza Hosseinova, a mother who was protesting in front of a school in Mashtega district of the capital, was arrested on Tuesday.

In an interview with Maidan TV, an independent Azerbaijani-language channel based in Germany, Hosseinova's husband said that he had been warned: "Either remove your child's hijab and send him to school or go to prison."

Friends also cut ties with Ilkin Hosseinov, an activist who launched an online platform on Tuesday called "Let Lily Go to School." It offers free lessons from volunteer teachers to students deprived of class.

According to a friend, Hosseinov left his house in Baku with unknown men at around 16:00 on Wednesday and his phone has been switched off since then.

Authorities have not commented, but friends believe he has been taken into custody. On Thursday, the platform's Instagram page was unavailable.

Since the protests began, users have reported problems accessing Instagram and TikTok without a virtual private network (VPN).

Most of the protests have been in religiously conservative neighborhoods, in remote settlements of Baku and in the southern regions near the 765-kilometer (475-mile) border with Iran.

Officials have long been wary of religious influence in Iran, where more ethnic Azerbaijanis live than in Azerbaijan itself.

On the night of October 13, Azerbaijan's special state service for communications and information security announced that a "foreign hacker group" had attacked more than 100 government websites.

A pro-Iranian group calling itself Team 313 (Cyber Islamic Resistance) claimed responsibility.

Azerbaijani authorities have defended the laws. One of the MPs named Negar Arpadarai told the 1news.az website that children do not choose hijab by themselves, but are influenced by their families.

He said: "A child does not have the freedom to choose a religion. This is the conscious right of adults."

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The conflict has now spilled over to Turkey, Baku's closest ally, which provided crucial support in Azerbaijan's 2020 war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

These two countries call themselves "one nation, two states".

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a devout Muslim, has spoken of creating a "pious generation".

Oktay Saral, his senior adviser, called Azerbaijan's restrictions "unacceptable" and asked Baku to "reverse this mistake".

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Several representatives from the ruling Justice and Development Party of Turkey joined this party.

Small demonstrations were held outside Azerbaijan's embassy in Ankara, organized by Köklü Değişim, an Islamist movement linked to Hizb ut-Tahrir, and outside its consulate in Istanbul, by the conservative Islamist group Özgür-Der.

President Aliyev's New Azerbaijan Party accused Turkish authorities of an "openly defamatory" information campaign and "groundless accusations," warning that Oktay Saral's comments risked damaging relations and meddling in Azerbaijan's internal affairs.

Earlier this month, Elham Aliyev himself said that no one should "stick their temperature to our way of life".

Behind this discrepancy may be another source of friction. Turkish protesters link the hijab laws to Azerbaijan's close ties with Israel, which sells weapons to Baku and buys Azerbaijan's oil.

Turkey's relations with Israel have been strained over Gaza, but Azerbaijan has tried to maintain its relations with both countries.

It's a difficult balancing act. On Thursday, as Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog spoke at a regional security summit hosted by Azerbaijan in Baku, delegations from Turkey, Iran and other countries left the hall.