BAKU, Azerbaijan, October 30. The 13th Summit
of the Organization of Turkic States (OTS) is taking place today in
Ankara, where Azerbaijan is handing over the chairmanship to
Türkiye. Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov is representing
Azerbaijan at the summit. President Ilham Aliyev’s absence has
already given rise to various interpretations, not all of which are
well-intentioned. To understand this move, it is helpful to recall
the role the OTS plays in Ilham Aliyev’s own political agenda and
the

This journey began 17 years ago in Nakhchivan. On October 3,
2009, the presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and
Türkiye signed an agreement there to establish the Cooperation
Council of Turkic-Speaking States. Ilham Aliyev hosted the summit,
and his name heads the list of signatories to the Nakhchivan
Declaration, which the four countries subsequently submitted to the
UN. Yes, the idea of a Turkic union did not originate in a single
capital, but it took on its legal form precisely on Azerbaijani
soil. And to this day, the organization’s founding document bears
the name of Nakhchivan: it was this document that Uzbekistan
ratified in 2019, and it was this document that was amended
following the renaming.


Already in the early years, the President of Azerbaijan shifted
the conversation from shared roots to practical action. When Gabala
hosted the third summit of the Turkic Council in August 2013, Ilham
Aliyev spoke not so much about linguistic kinship as about the
Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan oil pipeline, the Baku–Tbilisi–Kars railway,
and the expansion of the Port of Baku to 20 million metric tons.
“For the first time in history, the Caspian Sea
was connected to the Mediterranean,” he reminded
his partners. What is now called the Middle Corridor was, in Gabala
- AS FAR BACK AS 14 YEARS AGO - already being discussed as a
strategy long before it became a trendy topic among experts.


Six years later, Baku hosted the summit marking the
organization’s 10th anniversary, and it was there that Uzbekistan
became a full member. Azerbaijan’s chairmanship, which began at
that time, coincided with the most difficult years: the pandemic
and the 44-day Second Karabakh War, and it was with this background
that the Turkic Council arrived in Istanbul in November 2021, where
it became the Organization of Turkic States and adopted the “Vision
for the Turkic World 2040.”


That same summit awarded Ilham Aliyev the Supreme Order of the
Turkic World. The liberation of Azerbaijani lands from occupation
became a shared achievement of the Turkic world, and in July 2024,
the leaders gathered in Shusha. The informal summit, hosted by the
President of Azerbaijan, concluded with the Karabakh Declaration
and a decision to strengthen the organization’s Secretariat.


At the same time, the agenda proposed by Baku was evolving. In
2023, in Astana, Ilham Aliyev called for the development of
cooperation in defense and the defense industry, and in October
2025, Gabala once again hosted a summit, this time under the theme
“Regional Peace and Security.” Ilham Aliyev stated there that the
Turkic states should act as a unified center of power, and proposed
holding joint exercises of the OTS member states in Azerbaijan in
2026, as well as commemorating the centennial of the First Turkic
Congress, which took place in Baku in 1926.


These proposals were backed by figures. According to the head of
state, cargo traffic along the Middle Corridor has grown by
approximately 90% since 2022; Azerbaijan has invested more than $20
billion in the economies of its partner countries; and the capacity
of the new port in Alat is expected to reach 25 million metric tons
per year. Twelve years ago, in the same city of Gabala, the talk
was of 20 million metric tons for the old port. From cultural
forums to infrastructure, from infrastructure to security: at each
of these turning points, Baku was not so much a participant as the
architect of the agenda.


That is precisely why Ilham Aliyev’s decision not to visit
Ankara should be interpreted not as a distancing from the Turkic
world, but as a reminder of the conditions under which this world
was built. The official explanation is simple: a busy schedule and
the final of the FIFA U-15 World Cup, which is being held in Baku
for the first time. But one cannot fail to see the broader context.
In October, a number of Turkish public figures, including an
adviser to the Turkish president, made offensive remarks directed
at the Azerbaijani leader over Azerbaijan’s domestic decision
regarding school uniforms. The adviser was ultimately dismissed
from his post. For Ilham Aliyev, Turkic unity has always been a
union of equals. In this union, there are no seniors or juniors,
and brotherhood grants no one the right to judge a partner’s
internal decisions. Azerbaijan does not join the organization
seeking patronage. It brings to the organization transport
corridors, investments, victory in Karabakh, and the very idea of a
Turkic center of power. The solidarity that Baku offers voluntarily
expects the same respect in return.


And when this balance is disrupted, Ilham Aliyev refrains from
making high-profile statements. He congratulates Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan on the 103rd anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye, sends
a minister to Ankara to hold talks with Hakan Fidan, and remains in
Baku himself. The alliance is reaffirmed; the boundary is
delineated.


This, incidentally, is not a special policy toward Türkiye or
the OTS. Equality has long been the cornerstone of President Ilham
Aliyev’s entire foreign policy. “Our foreign policy is completely
independent and relies on national interests of Azerbaijani
people,” he said back in 2014. Azerbaijan is not a member of any
military-political bloc and for several years headed the
Non-Aligned Movement, which unites countries that defend their
right not to choose patrons.


Ilham Aliyev applies the same principle to all partners. He
pressed Moscow to acknowledge responsibility for the crash of the
AZAL aircraft. This month, Ramzan Kadyrov personally traveled to
Baku to apologize for the offensive incident, while in Ankara, a
presidential adviser lost his post. Different capitals and varying
degrees of closeness, but the result is the same: disrespect toward
Azerbaijan comes at a price, no matter who commits it.


Türkiye remains an ally of Azerbaijan, and this
alliance is enshrined in the Shusha Declaration, but precisely
because it is an alliance, it is built on a basis of equality. The
organization that was founded in Nakhchivan and given a new agenda
in Gabala remains, among other things, an Azerbaijani project, and
Baku has no intention of abandoning it. And the person who built
this Turkic house has the right to remind everyone that everyone
all those living in it are equal.