Iran’s Azerbaijani Question in Evolution
13
This study focuses on the phenomenon of growing national self-awareness among
members of the Azerbaijani minority in Iranian territory who are striving for
ethnolinguistic and cultural emancipation – in confrontation with efforts by the
regime and part of the country’s Azerbaijani population to continue with a policy
of assimilation. In the context of this conflict of identities, an additional goal of the
authors is to identify and evaluate potential and existing security risks that this
process represents for Iran’s internal affairs and for the stability of the whole
Caspian region. Because this topic has been subject to only limited study, the
presentation of the issue has been conceived in a relatively broad context. Readers
are therefore introduced to the ethnic, religious, and politico-historical factors
influencing the current situation in the area, followed by an analysis of the current
status of the movement for the emancipation of Iran’s Azerbaijanis and its influence
on Iranian state security. The final part of the study deals with the international
context of Azerbaijani nationalism in Iran, emphasizing primarily its security
dimensions. Individual chapters analyze the positions of the U.S.A, Azerbaijan,
Israel, Turkey, and Russia and the relations of those countries with the Azerbaijani
minority and with Iran itself.
Over the period of 2010-2014, we carried out a total of six months of fieldwork in
the major Iranian Azerbaijani cities (Tabriz, Jolfa, Orumiye, Jolfa, Ardabil), as well
as in in the midst of the republic’s Azerbaijani communities in the Persian-majority
cities of Tehran, Isfahan, and Qom. Security concerns both for researchers and the
Iranian Azerbaijanis we contacted required serious precautions not to draw
attention from the authorities. We carried out a combination of unstructured
interviews and loose discussions, as well semi-structured interviews, their depth
contingent on the trust that we were able to establish with individual interlocutors.
We sought to contact Azerbaijanis from all walks of life: intellectuals, students,
white and blue-collar workers, soccer fans, tradesmen, people from service
businesses. In total, we communicated with over 60 individuals. Our knowledge of
Turkish and Azerbaijani and Persian enabled us to establish contact with both
Turkophone and Persianophone Azerbaijanis, while our fieldwork, carried out
separately from each other, enabled us to randomize the pool of our respondents.
While our sample is by no means representative, it is one of the largest – if not the
largest – of all available studies dealing with the discussed issues using first-hand
data obtained directly from Iran-based Iranian Azerbaijanis.
14
Official Iranian Minority Policy
Although ethnic Azerbaijanis constitute about a quarter of Iran’s population, they
are still regarded as a minority. The Iranian regime officially rejects any form of
discrimination, but certain passages of Iran’s constitution
13
do not offer ethnic,
religious, and linguistic minorities rights equal to those of Shiite Persians. For
example, Article 15 identifies Persian as the official language of Iran, so official
documents, correspondence, and other texts must be in that language. Minorities
are de jure permitted the use of their languages in print and in the teaching of their
own literature in schools, but only as a supplement to mandatory Persian. The
constitution does not, however, make any mention of the possibility of teaching the
languages themselves, and in reality, there is targeted repression of such efforts at
schools for ethnic minorities.
14
Special attention is paid to Arabic. The position of
Arabic, the language of the Qur’an, is much better than that of the other native
languages of the ethnic minorities. Raeesi summarizes the consequences that at first
glance seemingly insignificant discrimination on the basis of language can have for
discriminated minorities. The following five points fittingly characterize the effects
of discrimination:
First, children from non-Persian families face a difficult situation. At home they
communicate in their native tongues: Azerbaijani, Kurdish, Balochi, etc. At school,
they are forced to study in Persian, although their teachers are rarely, if at all, native
Persian-speakers themselves. When comparing school results between the two
groups it is clear that non-Persian children are at a disadvantage. Students of non-
Persian origin thus have a considerable handicap vis-à-vis ethnic Persians or native
Persophones in general. Second, favoring Persian in the educational system leads
13
An English translation of the Iranian constitution is available online. “Iran – Constitution”, October
10, 2013, http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/ir00000_.html.
14
A comprehensive analysis of the Iranian authorities’ policies toward non-Persian ethnic groups is
offered in Samii, “The Nation and Its Minorities: Ethnicity, Unity and State Policy in Iran”,
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 20, no. 1-2 (2000): 128-42.