An official press release from the administration of Turkish President Erdogan illustrates the central point on Turkey's current international agenda:.
"Our President, Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the invitation of the President of Azerbaijan, Mr. Ilham Aliyev, will visit Karabakh on November 8, 2026.
As part of the visit dedicated to Azerbaijan's Victory Day, Mr. President will also hold a bilateral meeting with President Mr. Aliyev; In this context, various aspects of the Turkish-Azerbaijani cooperation will be considered; In addition, there will be consultations at regional and global events.
Respectfully brought to the public's attention."
The point, of course, is not that Turkey and Azerbaijan should "reset relations" or that "the contradictions have reached a critical mass."
But, first, there is a concrete reason for the meeting at the level of the Turkish-Azerbaijani presidency in Shusha.
Second, whatever they say, Aliyev missed the last OTG (Organization of Turkic States) summit in Ankara, which is unpleasant for the Turkish side.
Third, speaking of unpleasant things, the issues of Israel and hijab are significant differences with Azerbaijan on two key issues for the Turks: Palestinian and religious.
In general, we are not talking about matching Turkish-Azerbaijani watches, but about matching their mechanism, which started to break a little recently.
But what is acceptable in standard relations - failures and disagreements - is completely unacceptable in relations according to the ambitious model of "one nation, two states". Let's see how much we can align the mechanism during the Turkish-Azerbaijani high level meeting.