Best of luck.

That’s an interesting point ! When I ask the so called “Identity seekers” (Hoviyat Talab) where is the great differentiating items that you are so concerned about them ? they answer we are re-establishing them ! and they present a mixture of products that are new to our Azeri culture . As an example , they can’t show a mere single paper from a father to a son in Turkish in all history , or a single writing on a tomb , neither in Iranian Azarbaijan , nor in Baku , and they cry for lack of freedom for education in Azeri!
Our tradition in writing was in Persian , and imposing new system of writing is not ” re-establishment” but “re-creation” and “innovation” .

“Unfortunately, Iranian society is not a matrix that accepts various cultures and religions. Iranian society only promotes the dominant Persian and dominant Shia religion.”

Then why in this 1000 years of Turkic dynasties and as you say , more than 50% majority of Turks in Iran , there have been no opposition to such “Persian dominancy” ?!

Do you think we Azeris in Iran are masochists?! And we were so in all of our history?

“why not fight to gain equality in Iran? How can you not feel sympathy for members of your own distinct ethnicity….I suggest you go start speaking Turkish in front of a group of Persians and report that they won’t call your language, the language of donkeys. Sen turkce bilirsen?”

Yakhchi da biliram , but ethnic jokes are not good reasons for a political movement , if it was , the Ardabil’s should make the same move against us (Tabrizi’s ) that make joke for them !
And again you in Canada is alike Alice in wonderland , knowing not that I do speak everyday with my patients in my clinic in Azeri and no one has ever made a negative reaction in my whole life!!

Gandih,Martin Luterking and mandela were best human rights activister tru suporting ethnics movment againt unequality.

I told that you will be accused by lying(and dirty missinformation) is you can’t show document
that Azerbaijani destroyed Armenian stores and etc.

And let’s see what was your document

1)you send this link and wanted that i can google news if i don’t belive it.

This is your link “document”:

http://aramanoogian.blogspot.com/2006/05/azeris-in-iran-burnt-armenian-national.html

if you klick it,you read this:

27.05.2006 13:38 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Participants of a rally in Tebriz burnt Armenian national flag, fixed in front of an electric equipment store, owned by ethnic Armenian Abrahamian. The owner of the store was beaten, the store was destroyed, reports APA.

A)News com from PanArmenian(you think they tell tru?)who referer to APA

B)In APA website i searched many variant of this news,but zero result.Can you maybe search it better and showe me this news in APA?

C)As you told i google this news and fund only Armenian sites.This was result of google search:

http://www.google.no/search?hl=no&source=hp&q=Azeris+in+Iran+Burnt+Armenian+National+Flag&btnG=Google-s%C3%B8k&meta=&rlz=1R2GGLL_en&aq=null&oq=

They are only Armenian sites,but in one result you see this

Armenian News – CNN TO BROADCAST TRAILER ON ARMENIA – [ Oversett denne siden ]27 May 2006 … AZERIS IN IRAN BURNT ARMENIAN NATIONAL FLAG. Participants of a rally in Tebriz burnt Armenian national flag, fixed in front of an electric …
http://www.armtown.com/news/en/pan/…/18195/ – I hurtigbuffer –

Interesting was that if you klick, it’s nothing about CNN and burning Armenian flag ….
It is about Tourist reklam for Armenia in CNN. please,Check it self.

Next intressting is that there are many Armenian in Tabriz
,but they couldn’t take a photo from this destroyed shop or minimum give adress for this shop.photo and adress aren’t really documant that azerbaijani did it,but they couldn’t minimum show a photo.You can’t fund one independent news agansy who brodcasted this news.

Isn’t this dirty lie?
You want with such lies and propaganda justifing killing and torturing unarmed demonstrants?

In some of this links supose that American’s $75 milion go to protesting Azerbaijani.Israel,Turky and rep Azerbaijan suprting and planing south azerbaijani movment.Lie again and again.
Lik this link from 2006:

http://www.regnum.ru/english/648160.html

Now we know that all that $75 milion and much more gone to persian media(VOA/persian,Radio Farda/persian).
I think south Azerbaijani media from USA get les than 1% of persian media.
That is same propotion from other countery(BBC/England,frence,German,Israel,..)
You know that Turky stoped brodcasting Gunaz TV fram Turksat.
Rep Azerbaijan is same and have no media for movment in south Azerbaijan.

Now,we have many document that other counteries goverment suport persians media.
Now,who is conected with other conteries?

Dear Yek Irani,Armenian in karabak had autonomi in rep Azerbaijan and had owen schools and…
You know that Jerevan started separatism with Russians military suport.At that time Azerbaijan was infront of independent movment against Russia.

Even to day Armenia have military suport from Russian.
We know that whithout Russia Armenia couldn’t occupate 20% of Azerbaijan and can’t keep under occupation if Russia don’t give military suport.
This is independesi according you?
No,this is occupation accordin UN resolutions.

You jump very fast to other subjects lik, some body died in custedy or som people destoied semetery.
I don’t meen that everything is ok in Azerbaijan.
But alltime occupanter are more diktarurs.Dashnaks shooting and killing in parlament in Jerevan.Are they your freedom fighters(killing in parlament)?

About your video link:
I am aganst vandalism.If Azerbaijani vandalised,be sure that occupants has done much more.But they have strong lobby in west and Russia.World seeing and hearing occupant ,not occupated

At the end dear Yek Irani,I can’t have dialoge with you if you missinform and don’t care about that unarmed people get kild or torturd.I think better that you have dialoge with som psykolog/psykiater insted having dialoge with me,if you are happy of others missory.
Hope you think litle more and learn about empati.

Dear Farzin,Thanks alot for this blog and good luck in yours efforts for human rights.

I am merely presenting the who, what and why. Who the activists are, what are they doing, what are they writing against and why they are doing it. I am simply presenting the issue. I cannot have a blog that just solely discusses each political prisoner without providing some background.

And how do you expect me to provide sources in a blog which presents a “voice for the voiceless.” There is a lack of media coverage in minority regions of Iran. As for the cartoon, amnesty international reports that hundreds if not thousands were arrested while the government reports 330. I personally cannot trust Iranian news media. If there was more transparency, I would not be doing what I am doing.

Your friend said that Azerbaijan is not afarid of separatism and I proved him dead wrong. After that, you come to his rescue and ask me not to respond to him?

As I said, I support the Green movement but I will never support a racist pan-Turkist movement that shouts slogans against other ethnicities, burns armenians stores and makes up the biggest lie: Cockroach cartoon had something to do with Azeris. When the cartoonist himself denies it, and even other Azeri cartoonist do, you repeat the same nonsense that Azeris are called cockroach. It is like you are looking for execuses to show victimhood.

As per Turks, you can accuse me of racism but it doesn’t stand because you cannot differentiate two things:

1) From a historical point of view, I view the overall role of Turks as negative (despite some positives but an overall assessment) in Iranian civilization just like Greeks do, Russians do, Bulgars do, Armenians do, Macedonians do, Slavs
in the Balkan do and etc.

How and why I reached this conclusion is not worth discussing here, but it is based on assessment of lots of act. Even the role of Arabs one can say was not negative because Islam was positive.

These are personal opinions and I am free to have them. And having these opinions of assessments on the role of different groups/peoples on Iranian civilization does not make one a racist.

2) As normal human being who speaks Turkish, I have no problem with them and I separate point 1 from point two completely. Most of these (Anatolia, Caucasus and Azerbaijan) are anyhow not really Turks but Turcophones, no matter how much they might say otherwise. Point one is a purely historical affair.

As per “Azerbaijani Turkic” existing 1000 years ago, it did not. Even there is no attestation of the language. The identity did not exist. Because Azerbaijan, Arran and Caucasian were populated by Iranian-speaking and Caucasian-speaking (say like modern Lezgin) people before the Seljuq. The Seljuqs, Mongols, Turkmens (white sheep/black sheep) and the Turcophone Safavids brought its linguistic Turkification. Scholars are not sure when exactly was the tipping scale (end of Seljuqs, Mongols, Turkmens, Safavids), but from the looks of it, some major cities like Tabriz had their own Iranian language even up to the Safavid era (Maraghi, Safina Tabriz and etc.) and I believe it was the Savafid era as the population of Azerbaijan was mainly Shafi’i before the Safavids and Shafi’ism was not prevalent among Turks (they were in bulk Hanafis).

But an identity can be formed even in one century, although mainstream Azerbaijani identity in Iran is Iranian and not different from the rest as Aft mentions. The “Turkic” identity that is not present in the republic of Azerbaijan is two centuries old at most and nothing more, else the people there used to be part of the Iranian identity. The identity you are seeking is based on Rasulzadeh’s methodology (even Asgharzadeh clearly sates Modern Azerbaijani identity is madeup by Rasulzadeh). Asgharzadeh funnily tries to claim the Sherwanshah and the blossoming of Persian literature in their domain as Azerbaijani but even the population of Sherwan at that time were not Azeri-Turkic and neither were those Persianized Kings mixed with native Iranians but of Arabic father line.

However I do not think I can discuss these issues with you scientifically. What matters is that having an identity is a different issue than human rights. In terms of human rights, calling Iran’s Azerbaijan as “south Azerbaijan” (more than half of West Azerbaijan is Kurdish by the way and you have not defined what this 20th century USSR made term means), calling Iran a so called country, claiming non-existent “Aryanism” (which has nothing to do with Germany), claiming that coackroach cartoon had something to do with Azeris and etc. in my opinion has nothing to do with human rights. And just because I do not support a racist movement (pan-Turkism) against IRI does not make me against human rights which you accuse me of. Just like for example I would not support MKO or Saddam against IRI. I support peaceful movements like the Green movement.

Hope I brought some clarity into your accusations, but what you right has somewhat of a slogan-tone to it. I suggest you use sources.

Unfortunately, Iranian society is not a matrix that accepts various cultures and religions. Iranian society only promotes the dominant Persian and dominant Shia religion.

“I don’t think the claim of human rights activism is in correlation with promoting ethnic frustration and boycotting human rights movements for ethnic reasons .”

This makes absolutely no sense. If you are trying to prevent another May 2006 from happening, why not fight to gain equality in Iran? How can you not feel sympathy for members of your own distinct ethnicity. My friend even in America and Canada, it is difficult to express one’s language and culture among Iranians, not just in Iran. I suggest you go start speaking Turkish in front of a group of Persians and report that they won’t call your language, the language of donkeys. Sen turkce bilirsen?

You my friend are not writing about human rights anymore, but apologizing for the brutal behavior of that the regime pushes on minorities.

Again, stop using the affairs of Azerbaijan and Turkey to justify what the Iranian regime is doing to various minorities in Iran. If you actually cared, you would do something about it. We’ve been through this already.

God, how long does it take for a group of people to form an identity. Even if Azerbaijan didn’t exist until 1000 years ago, as you claim, which is completely false, should Azerbaijanis wait another 1000 years to ask for their rights? What’s the cut off period to form an identity.