Turkologist: Azerbaijan is not all-powerful—its vulnerabilities should become part of Armenia’s security strategy

ArmInfo.  Azerbaijan is not all-powerful, and the use of its vulnerabilities should be one of the guarantees of Armenia’s security, not the other way around.  Armenian Turkologist Varuzhan Geghamyan wrote this on his Facebook page, reacting to

the protests that took place in Azerbaijan amid the de facto restrictions on wearing hijabs in schools and Turkey’s negative reaction to this.

According to the expert, an analysis of the events of recent days in Azerbaijan and, in particular, the reaction of the country’s authorities to emerging problems once again confirms what specialists have long known. "I would formulate it this way: in the person of modern Azerbaijan, on the one hand, we are dealing with a sufficiently effective and stable dictatorial system, and on the other, with a deeply crisis-ridden, vulnerable state system that lacks independence in many matters. To more clearly understand what I am talking about, it is enough to look at the panic caused among the Azerbaijani authorities by the negative public reaction in Turkey to the hijab ban," the Turkologist added.

Geghamyan believes that the future of the system of power built by the Aliyevs over the course of decades is highly uncertain due to numerous circumstances. Here, he said, it is enough to mention the sharp depletion of oil resources and the resulting new socioeconomic crisis expected already in the coming years. The expert expressed the conviction that in the near future such crises will only become more frequent, pushing the authorities to seek new external targets. "The point of this analytical review is as follows: Azerbaijan is not all-powerful, contrary to what the forces operating in Armenia have been trying to convince us of for six years already. Work against Azerbaijan, including exploiting vulnerabilities of this kind, should be one of the guarantees of Armenia’s security, not the other way around. The threats emanating from Azerbaijan can be resisted, they can be neutralized, and victories can be achieved. The paradox is that the last point is perfectly understood in Azerbaijan itself, but not in Armenia, including by some national forces," the Turkologist concluded.

It should be recalled that protests in Azerbaijan began after girls wearing headscarves were not allowed to attend classes, while teachers tore hijabs off children’s heads.  The Azerbaijani Cabinet adopted the new rules in September 2026, according to which only secular clothing may be worn in state institutions and schools. Moreover, school uniforms were standardized, and the prescribed design does not include the hijab. Meanwhile, Azerbaijani pro-government media are trying to shift responsibility for the unrest in the country onto external forces that allegedly seek to influence Azerbaijan’s secular model of statehood.