Summit in Ankara without Azerbaijan's president: what lies behind this decision?
Diplomacy has an unpleasant feature. It allows one to pretend for a long time that nothing is happening, but sooner or later it forces one to answer uncomfortable questions.
In relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey, such a moment appears to have arrived. Today, Ankara is hosting the 13th summit of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), but President Ilham Aliyev will not be taking part in it. Azerbaijan will be represented by Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov. Meanwhile, in Baku, the first-ever FIFA U-15 World Cup and Festival is drawing to a close, and the head of state intends to take part in the awards ceremony for its participants.
The official explanation for Ilham Aliyev's absence is linked to his work schedule and previously planned events. However, it would be naive to view what is happening solely through the prism of protocol. In recent months, relations between the two allies have been accompanied by a troubling information backdrop that can hardly be ignored. The point is not that Azerbaijan is turning away from Turkey, but that even the closest allied relations do not imply unconditional agreement with any actions of a partner, let alone tolerance of systematic attacks on one's own state.
Brotherhood does not cancel out mutual respect. And if someone begins to perceive it as the right to lecture an ally, interfere in its internal affairs and dictate its foreign policy course, it is high time to recall that in the formula "One nation - two states," the second word matters no less than the first.
When brotherhood is confused with the right to give orders
The anti-Azerbaijani campaign in the Turkish information space did not begin yesterday. Over the past three years it has flared up with varying intensity, but the main target has invariably remained Baku's cooperation with Israel. Certain Islamist and Nursist groups, media resources affiliated with them, and political circles close to Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) effectively demand that Azerbaijan build its international ties in accordance with their ideological notions.
Accusations of betrayal, of serving Zionism and of insufficient support for Palestine are being used. The independent foreign policy of a sovereign state is being presented as a moral transgression, and disagreement with the demands being imposed as grounds for public harassment.
In early October, another wave of attacks intensified after the Azerbaijani representative did not leave the hall during the speech of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the session of the UN General Assembly. Then the decision of Azerbaijan's Cabinet of Ministers on a unified school uniform became the pretext for a new scandal. In the Turkish information space it began to be presented in a distorted form, inflating the topic of the hijab and shifting an internal matter of Azerbaijan into the religious and political plane.
The campaign was accompanied by insults against the country, its people and its leadership. Six protest actions took place in front of Azerbaijan's diplomatic missions in Ankara and Istanbul. Certain media resources contributed to the spread of distorted interpretations of Azerbaijani policy in the Arab information space, expanding the geography of attacks on Baku.
It is especially painful that all this was happening in a state that Azerbaijan consistently calls brotherly. Baku expected such pressure from its adversaries, but received it from those who speak louder than anyone else about Turkic unity and Islamic solidarity.
Official Ankara reacted to this farce in its information space, in the Azerbaijani side's assessment, too late. A timely halt to the insulting campaigns and provocations could have prevented the situation from going so far. When the information space long remains an arena of attacks on an ally, and then it is proposed to forget what happened for the sake of yet another protocol event, such an expectation looks strange, to put it mildly.
Selective principledness
The selectivity of the accusations against Azerbaijan deserves special attention. Turkish critics of Baku demand that it abandon cooperation with Israel, as though Turkey itself had never maintained diplomatic, trade and military-technical ties with that state. It did maintain them and continues to maintain them - though now this is done not openly, not directly and not always under the Turkish flag, but it is still done. For pragmatism takes its toll.
Why, then, is what is explained for Ankara by pragmatism and national interests declared betrayal for Baku? If cooperation with Israel is in itself incompatible with support for the Palestinians, this criterion should be applied consistently. But it is precisely consistency that is lacking here.
Azerbaijan is not obliged to coordinate its foreign policy with the notions of individual religious and political groups. It has its own interests in security, the economy and international cooperation. A state that on its own overcame the most difficult conflict and restored its territorial integrity understands perfectly well the price of independent decisions. And it should not have to justify its right to choose its partners independently.
One cannot demand unconditional solidarity from Baku while at the same time turning a blind eye to campaigns directed against Azerbaijan itself. It is all the more unacceptable to turn the historical closeness of the two peoples into an instrument of pressure on one of the states.
Diplomacy remembers reciprocity
In international relations there exists the principle of reciprocity. It does not mean that every absence from a summit must provoke a retaliatory demarche. Heads of state have objective reasons to change plans, and each such case must be considered in its own context. But reciprocity presupposes respect for a partner's interests and recognition of its right to determine its priorities independently.
In July 2024, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not take part in the informal OTS summit in Shusha, preferring to attend the match between the national teams of Turkey and the Netherlands at the European Football Championship. In May 2026, he did not come to the World Urban Forum in Azerbaijan, and in October he missed the seventh summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia.
These decisions in themselves do not give grounds to accuse Ankara of disrespect toward Baku. But neither can Ilham Aliyev's absence in Ankara automatically be interpreted as a political demarche, ignoring the Azerbaijani president's work schedule and the circumstances of bilateral relations.
On October 24, the first FIFA U-15 World Cup and Festival started in Azerbaijan, concluding on October 30. This is a large-scale international event being hosted by the country for the first time, and the president's participation in its closing events is of great importance. Consequently, the official explanation for Ilham Aliyev's absence is quite concrete. However, it does not cancel out the broader political context in which any decision by the country's leadership acquires additional meaning.
It would be wrong to claim that the president's non-participation is caused solely by the anti-Azerbaijani campaign. But it would be equally wrong to pretend that months of attacks have nothing to do with the atmosphere between the allies. A diplomatic pause is not necessarily accompanied by loud statements. Sometimes it is enough for a state to set its own priorities, not considering it necessary to demonstrate unconditional readiness for any protocol gesture.
The OTS does not belong to individual political groups
Azerbaijan remains one of the founders of the Organization of Turkic States and consistently participates in its development. Baku has invested considerable political and diplomatic resources in strengthening Turkic cooperation and is not abandoning this course. The president's absence from one summit means neither withdrawal from the organization nor a revision of strategic guidelines. The country is represented by the head of its foreign policy agency, and work within the framework of the OTS continues.
Therefore, attempts to present the current situation as Azerbaijan's rejection of Turkic unity would be manipulation. The organization exists for the common interests of states, and not to demonstrate obligatory personal closeness of leaders under any circumstances. And it certainly must not turn into an instrument of pressure on those who refuse to subordinate national policy to the demands of certain external ideological circles.
The current situation should become a reason for conclusions above all in Turkey itself. One cannot simultaneously demand unconditional allied solidarity from Azerbaijan and allow it to be systematically insulted in one's own information space. One cannot call for unity while turning a partner's independence into a pretext for harassment.
Political brotherhood also has its rules. The main one is equality, without which an alliance turns into a relationship between a patron and a subordinate. Azerbaijan will continue to develop cooperation with Turkey and other Turkic states, but this does not oblige Baku to pretend that what has happened in recent months does not matter.
Farhad Huseyn
