Taken From:
Van Schendel, Willem(Editor). Identity
Politics in
Recasting Oneself, Rejecting the Other: Pan-Turkism
and
Iranian Nationalism
By: Dr. Touraj Atabaki
Twentieth-century historiography on nation– state correlation and
nationalism has to a large extent been shaped by a eurocentric ethnolinguistic
discourse, where ‘ethnicity and language’ become the
central, increasingly the decisive or even the only, criteria of potential
nationhood, (1) or as Karl Renner asserts:
once a certain degree of European development has
been reached,
the linguistic and cultural communities of people,
having silently
matured throughout the centuries, emerge from the
world of
passive existence as people (Passiver
Volkheit). They become conscious
of themselves as a force with historical destiny.
They
demand control over the state, as the highest
available instrument
of power, and strive for their political
self-determination. The
birthday of the political idea of the nation and
the birth-year of
this new consciousness, is 1789, the year of the
French Revolution.(2)
However, what this perception of the nation-state largely neglects is
the fact that the construction of a bounded territorial entity (or what
is generally referred to as nation-state-building) has often entailed
components other than ethnic or linguistic bonds. Collective imagination,
political allegiances, reconstructing and reinterpreting history,
the invention of necessary historical traditions to justify and give
coherence to the emerging modern state: all these are often major
factors in bringing groups of people together and strengthening or
even forming their common sense of identity and political solidarity.
In some cases the mere application of ancient, historically resonant
names and traditions is enough to evoke a consensus of political legitimacy.
Consequently, the social connotations of certain key socio-political
phrases, as well as geographic terms, become an important
element in reshaping the geographic boundaries of emerging sovereign
states.
As
far as
was born as a state ideology in the Reza Shah era, based on
philological nationalism and as a result of his innovative success in
creating a modern nation-state in
neglected is that Iranian nationalism has its roots in the political
upheavals of the nineteenth century and the disintegration immediately
following the Constitutional revolution of 1905– 9. It was during
this period that Iranism gradually took shape as a defensive discourse
for constructing a bounded territorial entity – the ‘pure
against all others. Consequently, over time there emerged among the
country’s intelligentsia a political xenophobia which contributed to the
formation of Iranian defensive nationalism. It is noteworthy that,
contrary to what one might expect, many of the leading agents of the
construction of an Iranian bounded territorial entity came from nonPersian-speaking
ethnic minorities, and the foremost were the Azerbaijanis,
rather than the nation’s titular ethnic group, the Persians.
The intention of this essay is to throw further light on the complex
origins of Iranian nationalism. While examining the various loyalties
of the Iranian non-Persian intelligentsia, I shall sketch the measures
adopted by such groups when defending their real or imagined identities
against the early-twentieth-century irredentist ideology of neighbouring
states.
The Outbreak of World War I
For many Iranians the thirteen months of ‘lesser despotism’ of June
1908– July 1909 which followed Muhammad ’Ali Shah’s coup was the
most crucial period of their country’s constitutional history: the entire
country, except for
sending in the army and imposing economic restrictions, the central
government strove to bring the Azerbaijanis, too, to their knees.
However, while famine spread across the province, the Azerbaijani
constitutionalists set up barricades in
armed resistance. When the government in
overthrown, the constitutionalists found themselves in a nearly unique
position with the attention of the entire nation fixed on them. Gradually
the belief arose among Iranians that, although the Constitutional
Revolution
had been born in
and the Constitution had no chance of surviving without
Moreover,
any future progressive political changes would originate. This
appraisal of the cardinal role played by the Azerbaijanis in restoring
constitutionalism in
strong consciousness of being the protectors of the country’s territorial
integrity, a consciousness which still persists.
When World War I erupted, political chaos and confusion swept
across
country’s escalating problems and implementing fundamental reforms.
Indeed, not only did the outbreak of the war fail to stop political
disintegration in
rift in Iranian politics to widen. As early as October 1910,
southern
follow. Russian troops had already occupied the
In November 1911 the tsarist government presented its own ultimatum
to
reduce the north of the country to the status of a semi-dependent
colony. (3) However, while the Iranian parliament, which enjoyed the
support of the crowds in the street, resisted the Russian ultimatum,
the fragile Iranian government decided to accept it and dissolve
the parliament. This seemed the only effective measure available
to the deputies in the face of the crisis that had arisen. (4) Meanwhile,
the occupation of the north and south of
troops was to provoke the Ottoman forces to invade western and
north-western
the activities of German agents, especially among the southern tribes,
we begin to get an idea of how impotent the Iranian government was
during this period.
The Iranian government’s reaction to the outbreak of the war was
to declare
On the other hand, what sense was there in the government’s announcing
its neutrality when a sizeable part of
by the Entente forces? When Mostowfi ol-Mamalik, the prime minister, approached the Russian authorities and asked that they withdraw
their troops from
Turks
a pretext for invading
the Iranian viewpoint but inquired what guarantees could be given
that after the withdrawal of Russian forces, the Turks would not
bring in theirs.’ (5) Consequently,
battlefields of the war. As part of their military strategy, the Russians,
British and Ottomans all pursued policies which aimed at stirring up
or aggravating the existing animosities between the different ethnic
and religious groupings in the province. Promises were made with
regard to setting up a sovereign state for Kurds, Assyrians, Armenians
and Azerbaijani Muslims. Such demagogic manipulations led to the
most bloody and barbaric confrontations among these ethnic and religious
groups.
Soon
after the outbreak of World War I, the
the encouragement of Enver Pasha, the Ottoman minister of war, sided
with
good chance of surviving and perhaps even of making some gains from
British and Russian rule in
To him, the Russians were not only kafir (infidels), but also invaders
who had occupied areas south of the
part of the Islamic– Turkic homeland. Enver Pasha played a leading
part in negotiating a secret German– Ottoman treaty, signed on 2
August
1914; in October the Ottoman fleet entered the
bombarded
addition, Ottoman forces were deployed along the
with
The ultimate strategic objective for the Ottomans was to capture
the
and
extend the
boundaries:
We
should not forget that the reason for our entrance into the
world war is not only to save our country from the
danger threatening
it. No, we pursue an even more immediate goal –
the realization
of our ideal, which demands that, having shattered
our
Muscovite
enemy, we lead our empire to its natural boundaries,
which would encompass and unite all our related
people. (6)
In
December 1914, a Russian advance towards
by the Ottomans, but, in battles at Sarikamish¸ in January 1915
the Ottomans, ill-clad and ill-supplied for the Caucasian winter,
suffered their greatest defeat of the war.
In the south, other Ottoman forces, which had invaded the city of
Maraghan in late November 1914, moved to
Since
the Russian army was still stationed in
between two armies seemed inevitable. Although the Russian troops
avoided a military confrontation and evacuated
were unable to maintain their hold on the city and were expelled by a
Russian counter-invasion in March 1915.(7) The defeat at Sarikamish¸
was indeed a turning-point in the Ottomans’ policy of expanding east.
Throughout the remaining years of the war they adopted a low profile
in the region. It was only at the end of the World War I, and
following the Russian Revolution, that the Ottomans were able to
return to
Pan-Turkism and Iran’s Response to It
Although it took some years for the Ottomans to realize their dream of
installing themselves in the region north as well as south
of the
river, the pan-Turkist uproar
reached
Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) launched their
coup, which brought an end to the despotic era of Abdulhamid.
When Abdulhamid abdicated, pan-Islamism, which he had supported,
was flavoured throughout the heartland of the empire by Turkic
national sentiment. Like the people who initiated pan-Turkism, the
pioneers of propagating pan-Turkism among the Turkic peoples came
from the Russian Empire, having been influenced by the model of
nineteenth-century pan-Slavism.
As early as 1904, Yusuf Akc¸ uroglu (later known as Yusuf Akchura),
a Tatar from the Russian Empire, published a pamphlet called Uch¸
Tarz-i Siyaset (Three Kinds of Policies), which soon came to be
known as the manifesto of the pan-Turkists. In this famous declaration,
which was originally printed in
discussed the inherent historical obstacles blocking the advance of
pan-Ottomanism and pan-Islamism and advocated Ittihad-i Etrak
(Unity of Turks), or as he later called it, Turkculuk (Turkism), (8) as the
sole concept capable of sustaining the Turk milleti (Turkish nation).
He admitted that he ‘does not know if the idea still had adherents
outside the Ottoman Empire’, especially in Qafqaziya ve shimali
(the Caucasus and northern
future his views on Turkish identity would attract the support of
many Turks wherever they lived. (9)
Ittihad-i Etrak was soon adopted as a policy by political parties and
‘cultural organizations’ in the
(the Turkish Society) was founded in
present activities and circumstances of all the people called Turk.(10) In
its declaration issued on 25 December 1908, the society pledged to
‘encourage the use of Ottoman-Turkish among foreign
peoples. At
first, Turks in the Balkan states,
Asia and China will be familiarized with Ottoman-Turkish’. Furthermore,
‘languages in
reformed to be like Ottoman-Turkish for the
benefit of Ottoman
trade’.(11) Turk
Dernegi was followed by another society called Turk
Ocagi (Turkish Hearth). In its manifesto, written in 1912, this society
proclaimed as its chief aim ‘to advance the national education and
raise the scientific, social and economic level of the Turks who are the
foremost of the peoples of Islam, and to strive for the betterment of
the Turkish race and language’.(12)
The pioneers of pan-Turkism in Caucasian Azerbaijan, however,
were those of the Azerbaijani elite living in
by the stagnation of the Iranian constitutional movement, the
failure of the Russian revolution of 1905, and the crisis in the
European social democratic movement. Some, who were sympathetic
to the Iranian reformist movement, turned their gaze from
for unity among the Turkic peoples, was a new haven for such elites
from tsarist
turned to studying ethnic culture and history and its accompanying
political importance. The outlook of Ali Husaynzade, Ahmad Aghayev
and, later, Muhammad Amin Rasulzade was immediately welcomed
by the CUP, and some of them were even given government positions
in the new Ottoman regime. When Turk Yurdu (Turkish Homeland),
the main journal propagating pan-Turkism in the
was launched in
contributors to it. In one of his editorials Ahmad Aghayev even
reproached the Ottomans for calling the Iranian Azerbaijanis,
Iranians, rather than Turks. (13) Muhammad Amin Rasulzade in a series
of articles entitled ‘Iran Turkleri’ (the Iranian Turks), contributed a
descriptive analysis of the Iranian Turkic minorities and their distinctive
national identities. (14)
During
the war, pan-Turkist activities in
under tsarist rule, were mainly confined to the publication of certain
periodicals. While maintaining their absolute loyalty in the tsarist
cause in the war, periodicals such as Yeni Fuyuzat (New Abundance)
and Salale (Cascade), adopted as their chief mission the purification of
the Azerbaijani language, Arabic and Persian vocabulary was to be
purged, and words of pure Turkic origin were to be substituted, as
was being done in nationalist circles in the
news about the activities of pan-Turkist organizations in the empire
was often covered in editorials by ‘Isa Bey Azurbeyli, the editor of
Salale , the question of Iranian Azerbaijan remained neglected by such
periodicals, and it seemed that in their hidden agenda the forging of
firmer ties with the Ottomans had priority over unification with the
Iranian Azerbaijanis. (15)
However,
the attitude toward Turkism in the
altered when in 1913 an amnesty was declared in
occasion of the three hundredth anniversary of the Romanov dynasty.
Political activists such as the committed social democrat Rasulzade,
who some years earlier had launched the leading newspaper Iran-e
Now
in
On
his return to
newspaper. The first issue of Achiq Soz (Candid Speech) appeared in
October 1915 and publication continued until March 1918. Under the
tsars the newspaper called itself ‘a Turkish political, social and literary
paper’ and adopted a standpoint close to that of the tsarist empire,
endorsing the latter’s war policy. At the same time, it paid a certain
amount of attention to
occasion to cover Iranian news, it voiced its sympathy for the Iranian
Democrats. 16 After the Russian Revolution, however, it changed its
attitude, and abruptly adopted an openly pro-Ottoman policy, calling
for turklame´, islamlame´ va mu‘
asirllame´ (Turkicization,
Islamicization
and modernization).
On 18
October 1917, a branch of Turk Ocagi was
founded in
Among the aspirations of the new society, which claimed that its
activities were confined exclusively to the cultural domain, was the
desire to ‘acquaint the younger generation with their
historical Turkic
heritage and to consolidate their Turkic
consciousness through setting
up schools, organizing conferences and publishing
books’.(17) Achiq Soz
not only welcomed the new society but reported extensively on its
activities, covered its frequent gatherings in
lectures delivered at its conferences. Most of these lengthy articles
were on different aspects of the history and culture of the Muslim
peoples of the southern
south of the
(the Muslim people of the
the inhabitants of the region. The first Constituent Assembly,
which was established in
General Assembly of the Caucasian Muslims.
One
result of the political upheavals in
ended with the Bolshevik takeover in October 1917, was the creation
of a power vacuum in the
Commissariat was established in Tblisi, and it proclaimed ‘the
right of Caucasian nations to self-determination’. By then it was
obvious that the Armenian Dashnakists and Georgian Mensheviks
were poised to establish their power over a large part of the region.
The
Baku Musavatists, who enjoyed an absolute majority in
the
Constituent Assembly, realized that the time had come for swift political
action. With the old tsarist empire gone, the Musavatists were
counting on the Ottomans, who were now viewed as the uncontested
dominant power in the region. The goal of the Musavatists in their
contest with the Armenians and the Georgians was to win control
over as much territory as possible. They claimed ‘besides
the
and Ganja province, the Muslim population of Daghestan, the
northern
the Turkish inhabitants of the province of Erivan and
even the Georgian-speaking Muslim Ajars of the southern shore of
the
people lived in a large region within northern
hope was to persuade the Azerbaijani leaders in
their proposed project for unity. Consequently, in October 1917 an
emissary arrived in
that they separate from
federation. However, their proposal was rejected by the Azerbaijani
Democrats. (19)
Following this failure, in an editorial published in Achiq Soz, in
January 1918 the Musavatists for the first time tackled the question of
Iranian
historical boundaries of
mountains in the north and to Kirmanshah
in the south, with
forming the western frontier and the
Russian expansionists and the Iranian ruling class were blamed for
having adopted policies that resulted in the dismemberment of the
nation of
‘natural right of the south Caucasian Muslims to
call their territory
could join them’.(20)
Interestingly enough, the first reaction to this irredentist propaganda
came from a group of Iranian Democrats residing in
Since the beginning of the century, the flourishing economy of the
or Azerbaijani-speakers from the north of
they spoke the same language, they did not readily assimilate.
Throughout
the
(fellow countrymen) and they maintained a sense of separate identity
which marked them out as different from the local population. (21)
Of the various organizations that existed among the Iranian
community in
was the most eminent and active. The party’s Baku Committee was
founded in 1914 and its members were recruited from the Iranian
community in
view expounded in the Achiq Soz editorial was nothing less than a
pan-Turkist plot which menaced
integrity. Disturbed by such attempts to undermine Iranian unity,
they soon inaugurated their own political campaign in the region. On
10 February 1918, the Democrats launched the publication of a bilingual
newspaper, Azarbayjan, Joz’-e la-yanfakk-e
Inseparable Part of
the masthead with ‘Joz’-e
la-yanfakk-e
letters inside the ‘n’ of Azarbayjan’. Later on Salamullah Javid, a political
activist in
newspaper was taken by the Democrats at the local level and was a
direct response to irredentist propaganda initiated by Achiq Soz’.(23)
In
addition to promoting political change and reform in
newspaper declared as its task ‘displaying the country’s
glorious past
and its historical continuity’,(24) as well as
‘hindering any attempt to
diminish the national consciousness of Iranians’.(25) While glorifying
the name of
publication frequently referred to ‘the many centuries
during which
Azerbaijan
governed all of Iran’. Similarly, it stressed that
had a shared history with the rest of
and the feeling of belonging to territorial
the geographical front-line position of the province, the newspaper
‘declared it to be the duty of Azerbaijanis’ to confront the hostile
outsiders, and to safeguard the country’s ‘national
pride’ and ‘territorial
integrity’. Though the newspaper never named these outsiders,
or ‘intruders’, as they were called, it considered that ‘their intention
has always been to undermine
sovereignty’. Moreover, by representing Azerbaijanis as the main
champions of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, it attempted to
portray them as the sole guardians of
entity.
In a
multi-ethnic society like
ethnic group, a minority of Azerbaijanis living outside
within their linguistic territory, promoted a sense of Iranian state patriotism
and territorial nationalism rather than their own ethno-nationalism.
Their political loyalty and attachment to a constructed
political reliability therefore took precedence over their other loyalties,
in particular their ethnic loyalty. Likewise, they apparently believed in
the nineteenth-century notion of a ‘historical nation’ in which the
Staatsvolk (state-people) was associated with the state. In their view,
the Iranians, just as the dispersed members of a Greater Russia or a
Greater
state. Consequently they attempted to uphold their territorial/
Iranian
identity in the face of pan-Turkist propaganda by ‘shaping
a
significant and unbroken link with a seminal past
that could fill the
gap between the nation’s origin and its actuality’.(26) For them, as
Nipperdey has correctly pointed out, romantic nationalism provided
the driving force for political action: ‘cultural
identity with its claims
for what ought to be, demanded political
consequences: a common
state, the only context in which they [the people]
could develop, the
only force that could protect them and the only
real possibility for
integrating individuals into a nation’.(27)
With a persuasive political agenda, Azarbayjan,
Joz’-e la-yanfakk-e
and continued to publish even after the takeover of
Bolsheviks known as the Baku Commune. However, it was forced to
close down in May 1918 when the Musavatists regained power and
formed their national government. In their turn the Musavatists, who
had been obliged to stop publishing Achiq Soz during the previous
five months, in September 1918 launched their new gazette Azerbayjan.
By adopting the same name for their publication that the
Iranian
Democrats in
demonstrated their firm attachment to the name they intended to
give their future independent state.
The Return of the Ottomans
After
World War I, the political arena in
away by the winds of revolution and the Ottomans were striving to
put together the jigsaw pieces of their empire. If during their first
short-lived invasion the Ottomans had not had time to disseminate
their pan-Turkist propaganda among the Iranian Azerbaijanis, as a
result of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the fall of their old foe,
the CUP were now able to initiate a new pan-Turkist campaign in
northern
service:
(
account. . . . Northern Persia is essential to
Turanians
of
In
the middle of April 1918, the Ottoman army invaded
for the second time. Yusuf Zia, (29) a local coordinator of the activities
of the Teskilat-i Mahsusa (Special Organization) (30) in the region, was
appointed political adviser to the Ottoman contingent in
the Teskilat-i Mahsusa introduced a small pan-Turkist party in
newspaper called Azarabadegan, which was the Ottomans’ main
instrument for propagating pan-Turkism throughout the province.
The editorship of the newspaper was offered to Taqi Rafcat, a local
Azerbaijani who later became known for his vanguard role in effecting
innovations in Persian literature.
Contrary to their expectations, however, the Ottomans did not
achieve impressive success in
remained under quasi-occupation by Ottoman troops for months,
attempting to win endorsement for pan-Turkism ended in failure.
The Ottomans had never enjoyed the support of local political parties,
ever since their arrival in
Democrats had been particularly strained. With the passage of time
relations with the Democrats deteriorated to the point, where the
Ottomans went as far as to arrest the Democrats’ popular radical
leader, Muhammad Khiyabani, together with his two comrades
Nowbari and Badamchi, and sent
them to
being accused of ‘collaborating with the Armenians
against the forces
of Islam’,(33) the immediate result of their intervention was to whip up
serious anti-Ottoman sentiment among the Democrats, who were
preparing to take control of the province.
The summer of 1918 appeared to be a honeymoon period for the
Ottomans after stationing their troops on Iranian soil. Occupying the
area north of the
With
the seizure of
Turanian dream was gradually being realized: the region both north
and south of the
the end of the war approaching, and an escalating political problem at
home, not to mention the food crisis, the CUP leadership was obliged
to give priority to the centre of its envisaged empire rather than to the
periphery. A direct consequence of the large-scale export of cattle and
grain from the newly occupied territories to the Ottoman interior was
a mounting resentment among the local population. On 23 September
1918, an Ottoman– German protocol was signed, confirming the territorial
integrity of
western front when
It was then obvious that pursuing the war any further was impossible
for the Ottomans. On 9 October, the CUP government fell and the
new government of Izzet Pasha signed an armistice with the Allies.
Returning
to
announced the formation of a local government. The announcement
took place with pomp and ceremony in the ‘Ali Qapi’, the central
government’s provincial headquarters. In a country where the political
culture was dominated by xenophobia, one of the key issues for
Khiyabani and his fellow Democrats was how to dissociate themselves
as completely as possible from the foreign powers. Their relations
with the Ottomans, in view of the latter’s actions against Khiyabani,
remained cold and distant. But what concerned them even more
urgently was how to defend their position in face of the political
upheavals sweeping through the
On 27
May 1918, when the new
founded on the territory north of the
Transcaucasia, the adoption of the name ‘
in
and his fellow Democrats, in order to dissociate themselves from the
Transcaucasians, decided to change the name of Iranian Azerbaijan to
Azadistan (
they referred to the important ‘heroic role’
the struggle to establish the Constitution in
warranted adopting the name Azadistan. (35)
From Territorial to Titular Nationalism
The fall of the Musavatists in 1920s, which was a result of close collaboration
between the Bolsheviks and the CUP leadership, caused
considerable disillusion among the Azerbaijani pro-Ottoman intelligentsia.
However profitable this cooperation was for the Bolsheviks,
the old guard of the Ottoman Unionists in the region, by adopting
different measures, were still striving to realize their old dream. As an
intelligence British office remarked:
It
will be remembered that the unfortunate ‘Musavat’
government
of
a result of the assistance given by the numerous
Turkish Unionists.
The
infiltration of Unionists in the Turkish Communist Party
in
in course of time, and to gain control of
order to connect them up with their schemes in
The
Unionists’ plan therefore is to continue the alliance with
Russia
so long as it enables them to advance their own plans,
which are being energetically pursued. (36)
The
final consolidation of Soviet power in the
eventually realized by the subjugating of
paved the way for a shift in diplomatic maneuvering by the newly
born Soviet administration. In February the Soviet– Iranian Treaty
was concluded, and it was followed by the signing of a peace treaty
with
the Araxes river, the Soviet
regime adopted a restrained policy towards
officially forbidding any nationalist claims on Iranian territory.
The tragic outcome of Khiyabani’s revolt, which was followed by
the suppression of the uprisings in Khorasan and Gilan, left the
Democrats in
non-Azerbaijani background, were enthralled by pan-Islamism, as
propagated by the late Ottomans as a means of winning over a non-Turkic
people in the region. Another tendency within the Democrats
found it difficult to subscribe to the regional movement launched by
their party comrades. Subsequently, a new group of reform-minded
intellectuals gradually emerged on the Iranian political scene. Their
mode of understanding society was based on socio-political ideas of
West European origin. Despite the diversity of their political views,
what singled out them from the home-grown variety of educated or
learned individuals was the model of society that they took for
granted. The West European model presupposed a coherent, class-layered
society, which by definition was organized around the distinctive
concepts of nation and state. They were convinced that only a
strong centralized government based in the capital would be capable
of implementing reform throughout
nation’s territorial integrity. Likewise they believed that modernization
and modern state-building in
diversity and a high degree of ethnic homogeneity. Only when
fulfilled the preconditions for a nation-state as defined by them, when
‘empirically almost all the residents of a state
identify with the one
subjective idea of the nation, and that nation is virtually contiguous’,(37)
could they realistically cherish hopes of safeguarding Iranian territorial
integrity.
In
the recently born state of
to find a new home under the self-restrained Kemalist regime. In
1923, the Turkish magazine Yeni Mecmu’a (the New Journal) reported
on a conference about
During
the conference, Roshani Barkin,
an ex-member of Teshkilat-i
Mahsusa and an eminent pan-Turkist, condemned the Iranian
government for its oppressive and tyrannical policies towards the
Azerbaijanis living in
unite with the new-born
In
reply Iranshahr (
and the Tehran-based journal Ayandeh (The Future) ran a series of
articles denouncing pan-Turkism and became the pioneers of the
newly launched titular nationalism in
to provide historical underpinning, Ayandeh took on the task of
propounding the necessary conditions for the ‘unification’ and ‘Persianization’
of all Iranians as one nation. (39( Advocating the elimination of
regional differences in ‘language, clothing, customs and suchlike’,
Ayandeh demanded ‘national unity’ based on the standardized, homogeneous
and centrally sustained high culture of the titular ethnic
group:
Kurds,
Lors, Qashwa’is, Arabs,
Turks, Turkmens, etc., shall not
differ from one another by wearing different
clothes or speaking a
different language. In my opinion, until national
unity is achieved
in
of our political independence and geographical
integrity being
endangered will always remain.(40)
Their
insistence on raising the status of Persian above that of a lingua
from Turkish and Arabic, provided the newly constructed sentiment
with a form of philological nationalism. Later, philologists were to be
inspired to create grotesque and far-fetched neologisms such
as ‘kas
nadanad-sikhaki’, to replace ‘mahramana-mostagim’ (direct-confidential).
Moreover, their campaign of purification naturally went beyond
the linguistic field and pervaded the realm of Iranian history as well.
By
rewriting history, a ‘pure
created, an
within its borders. Such an identity ultimately depended on negative
stereotypes of non-Iranians. The Turks and later the Arabs, who were
referred in nationalist discourse as the ‘yellow and green hazards’,(41)
served as the indispensable ‘others’ in the construction of the new
Iranian identity. With the passage of time, the proponents of this
form of revivalist nationalism became the founders of a trend in
Iranian historiography known above all for its emphasis on continuity
in Iranian culture and its concern to uphold the country’s pre-Islamic
values.
Furthermore, by adopting the Western European model of modern
nation-state-building under an absolutist ruler, the Iranian nationalists
in their manifesto advocated bureaucratic efficiency, clear territorial
demarcation, and a homogenized and territorially fixed population,
who were to be taxed, conscripted into the army and administered in
such a way as to be transformed into modern ‘citizens’. When Reza
Shah ascended the throne, he wholeheartedly endorsed all the
demands voiced by these nationalists. Indeed, the blueprint for his
‘one country, one nation’ project was already on his desk.
Conclusion
The
most important political development affecting the
at the beginning of the twentieth century was the collapse of the
Ottoman and the Russian empires. The idea of a greater homeland for
all Turks was propagated by pan-Turkism, which was adopted almost
at once as a main ideological pillar by the Committee of Union and
Progress and somewhat later by other political caucuses in what
remained of the
propaganda focused chiefly on the Turkic-speaking peoples of
the southern Caucasus, in Iranian Azerbaijan and
secede from the larger political entities to which they belonged and to
join the new pan-Turkic homeland. Interestingly, it was this latter
appeal to Iranian Azerbaijanis which, contrary to pan-Turkist intentions,
caused a small group of Azerbaijani intellectuals to become the
most vociferous advocates of
If in
to be caused by modernism by providing a new and
larger sense of
belonging, an all-encompassing totality, which
brought about new
social ties, identity and meaning, and a new sense
of history from
one’s origin on to an illustrious future’,(42)
in
movement romantic nationalism was adopted by the Azerbaijani
Democrats as a reaction to the irredentist policies threatening the
country’s territorial integrity. In their view, assuring territorial integrity
was a necessary first step on the road to establishing the rule of
law in society and a competent modern state which would safeguard
collective as well as individual rights. It was within this context that
their political loyalty outweighed their other ethnic or regional affinities.
The failure of the Democrats in the arena of Iranian politics
after the Constitutional movement and the start of modern state-building
paved the way for the emergence of the titular ethnic group’s
cultural nationalism. Whereas the adoption of integrationist policies
preserved
Iranians with a secure and firm national identity, the blatant ignoring
of other demands of the Constitutional movement, such as the call for
formation of society based on law and order, left the country still
searching for a political identity.