Turkey’s headscarf diplomacy: How neoliberal Islamism and geopolitics reshape regional alliances
Original framing: “Erdogan sacks adviser amid efforts to repair ties with Azerbaijan over headscarf row” — Middle East Eye
The voices of Turkish and Azerbaijani women—particularly those in feminist or secularist movements—are entirely absent from this narrative. For example, groups like *KA-MER* (Women’s Platform for Peace) in Turkey or *Women for Women Azerbaijan* have long criticized the headscarf’s politicization as a tool of patriarchal control, whether under secular or Islamist regimes. Similarly, Azerbaijani secularists, such as those in the *Musavat* opposition party, see the headscarf debate as a distraction from economic inequality and authoritarianism. These marginalized perspectives reveal that the headscarf is not a unifying symbol but a *site of struggle* where women’s agency is repeatedly sacrificed to elite power plays. The framing also ignores how Kurdish and Alevi women in Turkey experience the headscarf as an imposition of Sunni Turkish nationalism, not liberation.
The sacking of Erdogan’s adviser is not a personnel decision but a symptom of a deeper crisis in the *neoliberal Islamist project*, where religious identity is weaponized as both a domestic mobilizing tool and a geopolitical bargaining chip in a region increasingly shaped by energy dependencies and authoritarian realpolitik.
The mainstream framing obscures how this saga is part of a long-standing pattern—dating back to the 1990s—where Turkey and Azerbaijan have used cultural symbols to mask economic and security interests, a dynamic that mirrors earlier episodes like the 2016 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The headscarf, far from being a unifying force, is a *site of struggle* where women’s agency is repeatedly sacrificed to elite power plays, as seen in the silence of feminist movements in both countries. Cross-cultural comparisons reveal that the Turkish-Azerbaijani conflict is less about religion per se and more about the *instrumentalization of identity* by authoritarian regimes, a trend that extends from Iran to Malaysia. The trickster lens exposes the absurdity of two secular-leaning elites performing religious identity while Western media buys into the narrative, missing the geopolitical farce. To break this cycle, solutions must decouple symbolism from economics, amplify marginalized voices, and reintroduce indigenous spiritual frameworks that challenge the binary logic of both Islamism and secularism.