Middle Easterners in Baku

If you have been to Baku during the summer then you may have noticed something, or rather someone rather curious.

There is a remarkable amount of people from the Middle East currently in Baku, particularly during the summer. You may ask how I differentiate the Middle Easterners from the Azerbaijanis, after all aren’t Azeris Muslim too? Well, yes the majority of people living in Azerbaijan are Muslim. However, having a predominant religion and having a deep institutionalization of religion, aren’t necessarily the same thing. So is the case for Azerbaijan.

While most Azeris are Muslim, it has only been twenty-five years since the officially atheist, Soviet regime ended. One of the legacies of the USSR is the way in which people express their religion. Most Azeris are not outwardly identifiable as Muslim. The men do not typically wear Kanduras, nor do women typically wear abayas, niqabs, or burqas (some women do wear hijabs however).

Arab tourists in popular Targova center in Baku

Therefore, when I see significant amounts of people wearing the traditional Muslim garb, it is a fair supposition to guess that they are foreign. That supposition has been more than supported and validated by the Azeris. My host mom, sisters, uncles, and language partners have all, at some point or another, expressed their shock about the amount of Middle Easterners in Baku.

And there are a lot of Middle Easterners in Baku. When I arrived to the Baku airport I was delayed an hour and a half at customs, waiting in line. I was waiting in line with hundreds of people who had just left various Middle Eastern countries, some had come from Iraq, some from Qatar, and others from Iran.

However, what’s more interesting here, is the reaction of the Azeris to the Middle Easterners. I have been told that in the past few years the number of Middle Easterners coming to Baku has increased because of visa problems. Many people from the Middle East have extreme difficulty and are heavily scrutinized in countries in the West. As such, they have chosen a relatively comparable and easier place to access for their vacation spot, Azerbaijan.

Arab tourists in Targova

However, the Azeris I have met and spoken with do not seem to be particularly inclined to their new guests. There is certainly a level of suspicion Azeris express towards Middle Eastern tourists. People who are very outwardly expressive about their Islamic faith, have in my experience, been people who arouse a significant degree of suspicion, as counterintuitive as they may seem. However, the lack of enthusiasm is due in part to racism, which is in Azerbaijan somewhat…flagrant. A young Azeri man told me that there were also issues with Middle Eastern men using Azerbaijan as a sex tourism destination. Whether or not this is true, I don’t know, but there does seem to be a sentiment of ‘oh, these foreigners here are ogling and stealing our women’.

The reactions of Azeris to Middle Easterners is certainly a fascinating subject. It is interesting that Azerbaijan, a Muslim majority country, would be suspicious of those who outwardly express their religion, and yet it is so. Certainly, the future development of this relationship will be fascinating in the years to come.