WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY : “IRANIAN AZERIS: A GIANT MINORITY”
By Ali M. Koknar
Today, Azerbaijan
June 6 2006
Recently in Iran, tens of thousands of Iranian Azeris took to the
streets for several days of demonstrations touched off by the May 12
publication of a racist cartoon in the state-run Iran newspaper.
Iranian security forces cracked down violently on the demonstrators,
killing at least four people (Azeri nationalists claim twenty
dead), injuring forty-three, and detaining hundreds of others. These
developments indicate brewing discontent among Iran’s Azeri population
and should be studied for their implications for U.S. and Western
policy toward Tehran.
The Iranian regime’s effort to put out this ethnic brushfire by closing
the Tehran-based Iran newspaper and arresting its editor as well as
the ethnic Azeri cartoonist quickly escalated to the usual strongarm
response as the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ anti-riot units
and Basij militias attacked the Azeri protesters.
Iranian security forces cracked down on tens thousands of offended
Azeris, who took to the streets in Tehran and in the major northwestern
Iranian cities such as Tabriz, Urumieh, Ardebil, Maragheh, and
Zenjan. The intelligence service launched a massive detention campaign,
rounding up relatives of Azeri Turks previously jailed for Turkish
nationalism.
The Iranian deputy interior minister for security affairs, Ali Asghar
Ahmadi, admitted that the demonstrations in Tabriz were far more
than a mere protest against a newspaper insult. In fact, there is
much resentment in Iranian Azerbaijan about the region’s economic
and social difficulties. That resentment is fed by the attitudes of
ethnic Persians toward ethnic Azeris-an attitude well captured in the
phrase “Torki khar” (Turkish donkey), used by Persians in reference
to Azeris, whom they regard as the “muscle” of the Iranian economy
to be dominated by Persian “brains”.
Azeri Turks, concentrated mainly in the oil-poor northwest of Iran
(along the border with Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan), make up
an estimated one-fourth of Iran’s population of 70 million. Azeris
often claim a population share close to 40 percent, a number that
includes ethnic brethren such as the Turkmen, Qashgais, and other
Turkic-speaking groups. Unlike other ethnic groups in Iran such as
Sunni Kurds and Arabs, the Azeri Turks are Shiites like the Persians.
Divided from their kin in Azerbaijan by the 1828 Treaty of Turkmanchai,
which gave northern Azerbaijan to Russia (that part of Azerbaijan
gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991)
and southern Azerbaijan to Iran, the Azeris’ role in the Persian
government was significantly weakened when the Pahlavi dynasty came
into power in 1925. Contact between the Azeri areas of Iran and the
Soviet Union were limited until Soviet forces occupied northern Iran
during World War II. In 1945, at Soviet instigation, an Azerbaijan
Democratic Republic was proclaimed in Iranian Azerbaijan.
It lasted only until Soviet forces withdrew a year later; in the
aftermath, some thousands of Iranian Azeris were killed.
Much as did imperial Iran, the Islamic regime has downplayed the
ethnic differences between Persians and Azeris. Despite the fact that
influential figures in the establishment, such as Supreme Leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are of Azeri descent, the mullahs did not
hesitate to crack down hard on Azeri Turkish nationalism, using heavy
weapons to put down a 1981 uprising in Tabriz and summarily executing
hundreds of Azeris.
Azeris have had mixed relationships with other Iranian minorities.
Kurds, who make up around 14 percent of Iran’s population, do not have
particularly good relations with ethnic Azeris; several cities in
western Iran, such as Urumieh and Mako, are inhabited by both Kurds
and by Azeri Turks. In the last decade, the ethnic majority of the
Azeri Turks in some areas close to the border with Turkey has been
diluted by immigration of Kurds. The attitudes of the Turkic-speaking
ethnic Turkmens, who live in the part of Iran near the independent
republic of Turkmenistan, are unclear.
The last fifteen years has seen a boom in nationalist publications
for Iranian Azeris and growing interest in both Turkey and the former
Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. A considerable number of Iranian Azeris
watch Turkish television broadcasts now available via satellite;
this has increased their knowledge of Turkey as well as the Anatolian
dialect of Turkish.
This revival led to the creation of a new organization, the South
Azerbaijan National Awakening Movement (Gamoh), by literature professor
Mahmudali Chohraganli. After winning election to the Iranian parliament
in 1995, Chohraganli, whose own father was once tortured by the Shah’s
secret police for Turkish nationalism, was not allowed to take his
seat. Gamoh opposes what it calls “Persian chauvinism,” demanding
more cultural rights for Azeris, and a future Iranian government with
a federal structure resembling the United States in which Azeris can
have their own flag and parliament.
Gamoh’s proclaimed support for self-determination, secular government
and a pro-Western orientation does not sit well with Tehran. Its
apparent popularity has put Gamoh squarely on Tehran’s radar screen.
Gamoh is run as a secret organization inside Iran. Its members,
including Chohraganli, who was jailed for two years and released
in 1999 after falling seriously ill, are often jailed or harassed
by Iranian security forces. Denied visas by both the Turkish and
Azerbaijani governments, Chohraganli was allowed to travel to the
United States in 2002. In April 2005, bodies of two Gamoh members
were found floating in the Aras River, the boundary between Iran and
Azerbaijan. In September 2005, the Iranian government blamed Gamoh
for the shooting of a government official in Urumieh; Gamoh denied
involvement. In March 2006, several Gamoh members attended the Second
World Azerbaijanis Congress in Baku. Following that congress, several
Gamoh members were arrested in Tabriz, and in April the Iranian Azeri
newspaper Navid Azerbaijan was banned.
The plight of Iranian Azeris is followed closely by their kin in
Azerbaijan and Turkey. But both the Azerbaijani and Turkish governments
take care not to damage their sensitive relations with the Iranian
government. Turkey recently stopped allowing a Chicago-based Azeri
television broadcaster, Gunaz, from using its satellite link. Gunaz
is known for its virulent opposition to Iran’s Islamic regime and its
separatist attitude since it went on the air in 2005. On the other
hand, Ankara has given Chohraganli permission to visit Turkey soon,
and Gamoh has an open presence there.
Azerbaijan is also walking a fine line between sympathy for the Iranian
Azeris and its economic and political interests with the Islamic
regime. Tehran recently consented to the opening of an Azerbaijani
consulate general in Tabriz, Iran’s largest Azeri-majority city. With
annual bilateral trade volume of $600 million, Iran is a major
trading partner of and an investor in Azerbaijan; Tehran also offers
humanitarian aid to the almost one million Azerbaijanis internally
displaced from Nagorno Karabakh after Armenia occupied that part of
Azerbaijan in 1993. Yet the Azerbaijani public is largely sympathetic
to the plight of Iranian Azeris. “Baku, Tabriz, Ankara. Where are
the Persians? Here we are!” chanted the Azeri Turks in Baku this
week as they protested the brutal treatment of their ethnic kin by
Iranian security forces. Many Azeri nationalists are interested in
uniting “North” Azerbaijan (the former Soviet republic) with “South”
Azerbaijan (the Iranian provinces).
Ethnic tensions in Iran have been on the rise with unpredictable
results, involving not just Azeris but also Kurds, Arabs, and
Baluchs. The government of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has only
made these problems worse.
Ali M. Koknar is the owner of AMK Risk Management, a private security
consultancy with offices in Washington, DC, and Turkey specializing
in counterterrorism and international organized crime.
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From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress