Azerbaijan's wannabe Erdoğan
Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
The phrase iki devlet, tek millet — two states, one people has become the ubiquitous way to characterize of the Azerbaijan-Turkey relationship. Turks consistently rank Azerbaijan as their most favored foreign country, and Azerbaijan, alongside Northern Cyprus, is always among President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s first stops after an election. Turkish cultural and political influence in Azerbaijan has also risen considerably in the past decade, and only accelerated since Turkey assisted Azerbaijan against Armenia in the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.
Few embody Turkey’s imprint on Azerbaijan as much as Tural Abbaslı, a 40-year-old activist-cum-politician. Abbaslı took leadership over the One Azerbaijan Party [Vahid Azərbaycan Partiyası] in 2016, and rebranded it as Ağ Partiya in 2020. His party’s logo is an Ottoman tulip that resembles the flame of the Azerbaijani state seal. Radiating from the stylized tulip are old Turkic damgas, or seals, characteristic of the Turkic Afshar clan of Nader Shah, configured at the same angles as the bolts of light beaming off the AK Party lightbulb. These elements give the logo a pan-Turkist flavor while invoking the power of Erdoğan’s party next door.
The similarity of the name and symbolism with the AK Party is hardly coincidental. According to its website, Ağ Partiya springs from the same ideology as the AK Party in Turkey. The party pledges its support to “‘new Ottomanism’ in the Turkish-Islamic geography.” Although Azerbaijan was not part of the Ottoman Empire, Ağ Partiya would remedy this by means of “‘national reconciliation’ through unifying the Ottoman-Safavid reality.”
Mention Tural Abbaslı in Baku and his name elicits bemusement and derision amongst both pro-government and opposition-minded Azerbaijanis. Most have seen his fiery monologues at media appearances. Wearing clean cut-suits, he rails against Bolshevism and Western meddling, all of which makes for very watchable Instagram and TikTok clips.
On one level, there’s some entertainment value in watching something of an Azerbaijanified Erdoğan impersonator. There is, however, something deeper to this, pointing at the heart of Azerbaijani-Turkish convergence on pan-Turkic nationalism.
Abbaslı, a savvy political entrepreneur, knows well that the ruling Aliyev family are a fickle political clan with an instinct for hedging their regime’s security in multi-vector dealings with Iran, Russia, and the West. To push forward his Islamist-Turanist politics in a political environment so dominated by the Aliyevs, he chooses to refrain from challenging the Aliyevs’ rule outright. Here, for example, is his statement on the occasion of President Aliyev’s birthday two years ago:
Dear Mr. President,
The beginning and triumphant end of the 44 Day Patriotic War [the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War] are important historical-political events for the coming of political reforms in Azerbaijan and the elimination of the consequences of Armenian aggression. Coming from this perspective, as Ağ Partiya, we did not proceed from political interests, but from the interests of national statehood [milli dövlətçilik]. All this constitutes the central initiative in your work towards the development of our new political culture [yeni siyasi məddəniyətimizin inkişafı üçün]. We wish you success in the continuation of this initiative in terms of our nationwide interests. At the same time, I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your 60th birthday on my own behalf and on behalf of the party.
With respect,
Tural Abbaslı
Ağ Partiya leader
By pledging his support to Aliyev’s efforts towards the “development of our new political culture,” Abbaslı seeks to de-center the Aliyevs and give pride of place to the civilizational political project of Turanism with Islamist overtones. Abbaslı likewise frequently fuzes the memory of the Ottomans, Safavid/Afsharid monarchy, and modern Azerbaijan’s non-Aliyev leaders through the AK Party’s brand. This provides him with prestige and political cover in a country where there is no longer space for meaningful political competition.
Unfortunately for Abbaslı, the deep and growing personal ties between Erdoğan and Azerbaijani President İlham Aliyev, built on shared economic interests and a common desire for regime stability, mean that an AK Party-styled movement is unlikely to bring about radical change. The Aliyevs have enticed members of the Erdoğan family and the broader nexus of AK Party-linked construction magnates, the beşli çete, with lucrative business opportunities in the territories taken by Azerbaijani forces in 2020. Aliyev effectively endorsed Erdoğan in this year’s elections, and Erdoğan has had little complaint about his counterpart in Baku.
Abbaslı and his party ultimately advance only the illusion of an alternative to the Aliyevs, whom they will not directly criticize. It’s telling that Abbaslı dismissed Russian opposition politician and journalist Alexey Navalny as a “Western project” and distanced himself from elements of the Azerbaijani opposition that backed protests in Russia. In this way, Ağ Partiya resembles the systemic opposition parties of Russia.
Still, Abbaslı’s populist rhetoric sometimes lands him on topics that are uncomfortable for the Aliyev regime. In one clip, Abbaslı criticized the pervasiveness of monuments to Nariman Narimanov, an early Soviet leader in Azerbaijan, and the absence of monuments to leaders of the first republic like Mahammad Amin Rasulzada. The Aliyevs have largely erased figures like Rasulzada from official history in favor of İlham Aliyev’s father and predecesor, Heydar Aliyev, who led Soviet Azerbaijan from 1969 to 1982 and came back to power from 1993 until his death in 2003. Abbaslı’s two most watched TikToks, each with nearly a million views, feature a montage of his arrest as a Müsavat activist in 2012 and a visit to the grave of former Azerbaijani President Abülfaz Elçibay, a fiery nationalist (also popular among Turkists in Turkey), who Heydar Aliyev removed from power on June 15, 1993. Azerbaijan commemorates the day of Heydar Aliyev’s return to power every year as National Salvation Day of Azerbaijanis, a national holiday.
That line of politics probably makes the Aliyevs uneasy because, for what truth there is in the state’s fanfare describing Heydar Aliyev as “the Azerbaijani people’s national [ümummilli] leader and founder of the independent Azerbaijani state,” the regime is clearly a continuation of Soviet political tradition and not a nationalist rupture.
Though importing the AK Party brand to Azerbaijan doesn’t make for real opposition politics, the charismatic, majoritarian pan-Turkic nationalism of Rasulzada and Elçibay’s ilk remains the most compelling template for many opponents of the current regime. Today, Azerbaijan’s secularist elite and Turkey’s religious-populist rulers are well aligned, but Abbaslı’s staying power and viral social media presence indicates that the earlier Azerbaijani political tradition remains alive and well.
Abbaslı also demonstrates the powerful international attraction of Erdoğan, who has in recent years pitched himself as a leader for the Global South, and especially Muslims. We may see more political entrepreneurs re-deploying the Erdoğan brand outside Turkey in years to come.
Hi folks,
Sam here is my research assistant at FPRI. It’s a bit awkward because your research assistant isn’t really supposed to be smarter than you, but here we are.
Sam has been traveling the world (especially the Turkic one) for some time and absorbs languages like a sponge. I’ve been learning a lot from him and hope he keeps writing! You can follow him on Twitter @SJHarshbarger.
All the best,
Selim