BAKU - Turkey must decide whether to concentrate its leadership ambitions on the Turkic world or the broader Islamic world, and Arab states are unlikely to support Ankara in the latter role, Azerbaijani opposition politician Natig Jafarli said.
Jafarli, the leader of Azerbaijan’s REAL party, made the comments during a Prime TV Azerbaijan discussion on relations between Baku and Ankara and Turkey’s foreign-policy priorities.
He said claims to regional leadership require resources, time and a consistent strategy. A shared religion, he argued, does not mean other countries are prepared to let Turkey represent their interests.
Jafarli used a hypothetical reform of the United Nations Security Council to illustrate his point, asking whether Arab states would choose Turkey as a common representative of Muslim countries.
“Would Arab countries vote for Turkey? Let us speak openly: absolutely not,” he said.
Jafarli said the question exposed the limits of efforts to unite the Islamic world under Ankara’s leadership. At the same time, he rejected suggestions that recent public disputes could break the Azerbaijan-Turkey partnership, saying the relationship rests on overlapping strategic interests, extensive economic ties and close links between the two societies.
The program cited about $24 billion in accumulated Azerbaijani investment in Turkey and roughly $14 billion in Turkish investment in Azerbaijan. The two countries have set a goal of raising bilateral trade to $15 billion.
Participants also discussed customs procedures, tax barriers and the implementation of the bilateral agreement on avoiding double taxation as obstacles to faster trade growth.
Jafarli said Azerbaijan’s cooperation with other countries, including Israel, should not automatically be interpreted as action against Turkey. He pointed to Baku’s role in facilitating contacts between Syria and Israel, as well as Azerbaijani gas deliveries to Syria, arguing that Azerbaijan views stronger Turkish influence in the region as serving its own interests.
He also criticized attempts to attribute Azerbaijan’s independent decisions to Israeli influence, calling such claims illogical and harmful to relations between Azerbaijani and Turkish society. Some commentators, he said, deliberately inflame disputes, while others exploit sensitive issues to gain attention on social media.
Jafarli called for closer and more regular contact among Azerbaijani and Turkish academics, journalists, cultural figures and civil-society groups so disagreements can be addressed before they are dominated by voices seeking conflict.