Wanderlust World Wanderlust World Among living languages, Azerbaijani (Azeri) is the closest to Turkish. Both belong to the Oghuz branch of the Turkic family.
They share high mutual intelligibility (estimated 80–90% in basic conversation), similar grammar, and core vocabulary. Differences lie in loanwords (Azeri has more Persian/Arabic/Russian influence), some phonological shifts, and the script (Turkey uses Latin; Azerbaijan officially uses Latin but Cyrillic persists).
Other Oghuz languages: Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz. More distant Turkic relatives: Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Uyghur.