Policy of Turkification in Iran

[Harold F. Schiffman]

From: Persian Journal
The Policy of Turkification in Iran
Oslonor
Nov 13, 2005, 12:55


The Turkification of Iran under the leadership of the former President
Khatami has been carried under the banners of "Iranian Aryan Nationalism".
The truth is these people represent the Azeri nationalism and their base
of support are Azeris. In their political campaign they always use Persian
girls and they paint themselves as the inheritors of the Persian
civilization. The policies of Turkification targets the Persian minority
and tries to destroy the Persians as an ethnic minority and replace them
with Turks.  The policy is based in destroying the structure of Iranian
population where Azeris live in separate and far away provinces from
provinces where Persians live and tries to mix the Azeri population with
Persian population. I will list some of the policies and as research
continues more items will be added.


1. Growth of Tehran: Concentration of Economic Resources in the Capital
Tehran. Tehran has 12 million population and its population is increasing
on a daily basis. This is a growth of %1200 from 1 million to 12 million
since the fall of Shah. All modern European countries decentralize the
resources to cut down on pollution and increase economic activity in
provinces. Iran under 8 years of War with Iraq urgently needed to spread
out resources in order to minimize military damage to sensitive resources.
Despite the military requirements the growth of population in Tehran has
continued. At the same time the difference in income levels between Tehran
and provinces have widened.

2. Afghan Refugee Policy: Under Khatami administration only Hazaras who
are descendents of mongol turks were officially accepted as refugees. The
other Persian speaking and non-Turkish afghan refugees were denied
admission.

3. Promoting ethnic tensions specially with Arabs and Kurds: This policy
is a cover to promote Azeri Nationalism and representing Azeris as true
Persian nationalist. The events in Khuzestan and Kurdistan is a
confirmation of these policies. The Iranian government is looking for
another "Great Satan" to replace US with. Arabs can be a good replacement
as "Arabs are the Great Satan". Currently supporters of Azeri nationalism
are making a lot of noise about the "The Superiority of the Aryan Race
over the Arabs" in order to distract attention from Azeri Nationalism.
Recent Bomb explosions in the city of Ahwaz in South West oil province is
another indication of this scheme.

4. Moving Azeris to Khuzestan: Plans to move Azeris into the Oil Province
in Khuzestan. The content of the letter outlining this policy was leaked
out from President Khatami's office to the Iranian domestic mass media.

5. Moving the Capital Tehran: Plans to move the capital from Tehran to
Mashhad. Mashhad is the capital of the biggest Persian speaking province
Khorasan which borders Afghanistan. This plan includes moving several
million Azeris into Khorasan. Articles have appeared in Iranian press on
this subject. It has been opposed by the Persian clergy in Mashhad.
Another plan was to divide Khorasan into 20 provinces in order to weaken
it as a base of resistance for the Persian clergy.

6. Azeri civil servants to Provinces: Sending Azeris civil servants into
different provinces and replacing local employees with Azeris.

7. Anti-Persian Campaign:The campaign against Persian Chauvinism is a
cover to promote Azeri nationalism. The Republic of Azerbaijan has started
programs on Persian Satelite channels to help their partners in Iran with
their campaign. What is interesting is very little Azeri is spoken on
these channels despite that it is controlled by The Republic of Azerbaijan
and they constantly complain about lack of Azeri language programs. Most
of the programs are in Persian. The purpose is mainly to convince Persians
of their Persian Chauvinism. Under normal conditions, nationalist tv's
address only their own ethnic people such as Azeris and not the people
they call oppressors.

8. Affirmative Action for Azeris: Promoting and accepting Azeris into
univeristies on a priority basis. (Similar to affirmative action for
blacks in US). In reality Kurds and other minorities should be granted
affirmative action and not the majority population.

9. Selling of Persian Girls: Smuggling the Persian girls into neighboring
arab countries and selling them into sex slavery for Arabs and rich Azeris
living in Dubai. The current price is 5000 dollars. This is mostly
organized by Azeris gangs who operate with the authority's approval. On
this subject even the other Azeri groups in the government have protested.
This was a major issue on the last presidential election between the two
main Azeri factions running for president in Iran on August 2005.

10. Transfering the Oil income to Azerbaijan and Tehran. Both Kurds and
Arabs and others have always complained about the lack of resources in
Kurdistan and Khuzestan and the abundance of resources for Azeris in
Tehran.

11. The Murder of Persian Nationalist: The murder of Mr. Dariush Forohar
the leader of Pan Iranian Party and his wife for opposing the
Turkification policies by the agents of government. This has been admitted
even by the government of Iran and they even held trials for the members
of the security apparatus. This also led to demonstrations by the people.

12. All Iranians are Opposed: Both ordinary Azeris and other Iranians are
opposed to these policies organized by some groups in power. The plan by
these groups to turn Iran into Yugoslavia will fail.

13. Massive Immigration of Azeris into other Provinces: The massive
immigration of Azeris into Tehran and other provinces in the search of
"Jobs" is an official policy by the government in order to strenghten its
base of support and spreading it to other parts of the country. It also
provide a base for spying network on ordinary citizens. Azeris are the
most loyal segment of the population for the Tehran government. It also
accomplishes its racial mixing policies ordered by foreign backers. This
is an attempt to improve the Azeri race and destroy the Persians as a
race. According to many sources the provinces of Gilan and Mazandran has
seen a lot of immigration by Azeris. It seems these two provinces have
been specially targeted for turkification policies in its early stages.
Also to justify their policies, they have started their own so called
"research" showing that almost all provinces in Iran are actually Turkish
provinces. This ranges from the Turkish Khorasan province to Turkish Fars
province to turkish Gilan and Mazandran province etc. If that is not
enough, they want even to unite with the Republic of Azerbaijan in order
to bring even more Azeri Turks into Iran and strenghten the Turkish
faction within the Azeri Regime in Iran.

14. Murder of Zoarastrians: The Azeris gangs running Iranian government
are involved in the murder of the prominent Iranian traditional
Zoarastrian leaders. The latest one was in France. Azeri nationalist also
support liberal Zoarastrian who believe that the Iranian Zoarastrian
should accept african-americans as their members. The traditional
Zoarstrians believe that only Iranians can be Zoarastrian. According to
some reports the Liberal Zoarastrians in California are planning to
register a religious minority category called Persians. These people are
supposed to be the ones who believe in Zoarastrianism "liberal Style".
Under this category african Americans and Azeris would be called Persians,
but the real persians would be classified as Iranians.

15. Iranian Government Leaders are Turks: Practically all leaders of
Iranian government are Turko-Azeris. Khamnei The Supreme Leader: Azeri,
Rafsanjani Former President: Uzbek, Khatami Former President: Azeri,
Ahmadinejad President: Azeri etc. The only non-Azeri high ranking official
was Ayatollah Khomeini. After his death his son Ahmad was murdered by
agents of government and his grandson fled to Iraq.

16. Taliban Crimes in Afghanistan: Al Gore and Co. are the foreign backer
of these Azeri nationalist in Iran. Al Gore was the main sponsor of
Taliban in Afghanistan and they are responsible for all the crimes
committed against the people of Afghanistan. The racial policies of Azeri
nationalist are sponsored by Jews and they have the same policy in both
Europe and US. It has led into social breakdown in Europe. The riots in
France confirms this. For more information on Al Gore click here.

17. Destroying Persian Identity: Azeris are given leading jobs in Iranian
mass media based in Los Angeles by their backers. These azeri "leading"
mass media journalists promote Azeri identity as Persian identity. They
also repeatedly state that Persians are mixed with Arabs. One of these
Azeri figures has repeatedly stated on the Iranian satelite channels that
the reason he looks like Afro-Arabians is because he is Persian and mixed
with Arabs because of Arab invasion in 6 century AD. He does not mention
that he is Azeri and not Persian.

18. Azeri Nationalism a dead-end ideology: Azeri nationalism is a dead-end
ideology and will lead nowhere. The Azeri nationalist in power in Iran are
not able to change the DNA of Azeris no matter what they do. All they will
accomplish is destroying all ethnic groups in Iran. That includes
Persians, Kurds, Lurs etc. This policy of assimiliation has already been
carried out in The Republic of Azerbaijan and is similar to the
Pan-Turkist ideology in Turkey where they do not recognize any ethnic
group beside Turks.

19. Azeri Nationalist Slogans: Pan-Iranism: The more Azeri
nationalist lose their momentum, the more desperate slogans they promote.
Their latest slogans are "To purify Iran by eliminating Arabs and
Turkomens". Similar things they have done in Turkey with murder of
Armenians and Kurds. I have personally met some Turkomens and Turkomens
are one of
nicest and friendliest people of Iran. The slogan of Pan-Iranism is the
same version of Pan-Turkism only under a different name. Pan-Iranism means
to these people that all Persians should be assimilated into Azeri Turks.
And that is what they are actually doing. The Azeri nationalist hide
under Iranian label and call themselves an Iranian race. That is what they
mean by Azeris are Iranians. In reality Iranian is not a race but it
points to all ethnic groups in Iran. These Azeris misuse the label of
Iranian to mean there is an Iranian race. This way they justify their
turkification policies. They say that they want to eliminate the turkish
race in Iran by mixing the turkish population into other ethnic groups and
specially they target Persians for their heritage. In reality they
are trying to destroy Persians as a race or an ethnic group in Iran.
Another method used by these people is to promote racism against other
ethnic groups such as Arabs and Turcomans. And Azeris claiming Medes,
Persians and Scythians as their ancestors. So Azeris are pure Aryans. In
other words racism is very good if directed against other ethnic groups
but it is very bad if it is directed against Azeris themselves. Here is a
"Pan-Azeri" video.

20. Are Azeris Persians: The Azeri nationalist claim that Azeris are
Persians but speak Turkish language. They also claim that they originate
from Medes. The reason is that they want to carry out their policies under
the banner of Pan-Iranism. There are two problems with this theory. First
the Azeris do not look like Persians or Kurds. Secondly, the seljuck Turks
who are the ancestors of Azeris ruled over the whole Persia. Why the rest
of Iran not speaking Azeri language if they impose it on Persia? Why Kurds
are not speaking Azeri language? The remnants of Talish persian speaking
minority in Azerbaijan is precisely the proof that Seljuk Turks did not
impose Azeri language. Of course those who had Azeri language as their
native language spoke Azeri not because it was imposed, but because it was
their native language. Not only Seljuk Turks did not impose Azeri language
but they even adopted Persian language is the language of the Elite of
Seljuks.

21. Persian Chauvanism: The Republic of Azerbaijan claims that Persians
are chauvanist and are oppressing Azeris. They also claim Persians are
running Iran. The Azeri nationalist in power in Iran claim that Azeris are
oppressed and we should help Azeris out of this oppression. These two
factions work together behind the scenes.

22. Are Qashqais Azeris: Azeris claim Qashqais in Fars province are Azeris
and they speak a dialect of Azeri language. Actually Qashqaii have nothing
to do with Azeris. They are a tribe of Persians and local Turks who have
adopted a turkish language. Many of them look Persian but speak a turkish
language unrelated to Azeri language.

23. Azeri Race: The Azeri sponsors in West claim Azeris belong to two
races depending on which country they are in. They are both Armenoid and
Irano-Afghan race. That sounds a new innovation in science.

24. Azeri Nationality Policy: Azeris claim that the existence of different
nationalities and races in Iran are pure fantasy. The only race in Iran is
an Iranian race which they are member. There are no other races in Iran.
That is why other ethnic groups should avoid using Iranian as this label
is misused by Azeris. They should identify themselves as Persian-Iranians
or Kurdish-Iranians. Let Azeris call themselves Iranians which is equal to
a Turk.

25. Azeri Population: Azeris are estimated to be around 35 to 40 million
people in Iran. Also note that Azeri nationalist always underestimate the
number of Azeris in Iran in order to hide behind Iranian label.

26. Turkish Provinces in Iran: Azeri nationalist has started to claim most
of the Persian provinces as Turkish. It ranges from Fars to Khorasan to
Mazandran etc. Scholary research is welcome but it seems they have a
political agenda.


Iranian.ws

http://www.iranian.ws/iran_news/publish/printer_10873.shtml