Azerbaijan’s Interior Ministry detained 37 people in Baku on 12 October during protests over the enforcement of new public-school dress code regulations, the pro-government APA news agency reported. The protests coincided with inspections of schools, while opposition outlets said pupils and teachers wearing headscarves were being denied entry.
According to the Interior Ministry, protesters confronted education staff, damaged public educational facilities and attempted to disrupt public order, traffic and the normal operation of schools. Video published by APA appeared to show a crowd outside a school trying to enter by breaking glass doors, followed by a physical altercation inside the building.
The new regulations require pupils’ and teachers’ clothing to conform to the secular character of education but do not explicitly ban headscarves. Opposition media reported protests at schools across Azerbaijan, with participants describing the measures as a ban on the hijab.
The dispute was also accompanied by reports of problems accessing Instagram and TikTok in Azerbaijan. Users said the platforms were loading slowly or not at all, while monitoring services recorded numerous complaints from the country but no global outages. Some users reported that the services remained accessible through VPNs. No official explanation for the disruption was given, and neither Meta nor TikTok commented, according to Meydan TV.
Pro-government officials and commentators have defended the school dress policy as a way to reduce visible social inequality and preserve the secular character of education. State broadcaster AzTV also warned of what it described as foreign ideological influence and accused unnamed regional countries of encouraging an anti-government campaign around the hijab issue.
The controversy has sharply divided public reaction online. Some users defended the right to express religious beliefs, while others accused the protesters of advancing Iranian interests and seeking to move Azerbaijan towards a more religious model. Azerbaijani authorities have previously accused Iran-based and other foreign online platforms of attempting to politicise the school dress regulations and undermine the country’s secular state model.
The protests and detentions are likely to keep the debate over religious expression, school regulations and Azerbaijan’s secular model in the public spotlight, while authorities continue enforcing the new dress code and monitoring compliance in schools.
