Actually, replacing the turkish names in Azarbaijan with persian names, would be like reverting the name of Newyork to a Native American name, since the arrival of the turkish language at Caucasus and Azarbaijan is not more than 6-800 years old.

Forbidding shops to use turkish names is another matter and only one example of the oppressions practiced in Iran to day by the Islamic government.

Dear Farzin,
You just censored one of my posts which had no insults against anyone. Also Turkish names are not banned in Iran. However I shall summarize our coresspondences here as well as the fact that you censored one of my posts. For that, I will ask my friend Dr. Farrokh to cancel his interview with you as you are not different than IRI.

Farzin

You deleted my message but I can easily re-write it. Censoring messages though is not about human rights.

Even censoring the message of Behnam was condemnable.

Dear Farzin

Yes anyone that says death to Armenians, Russians and etc., I have no sympathy for. It doesn’t mean I want them to be beaten, rather they have been a victim of some political games. But I don’t have sympathy with them in the sense of their political movements.

Accusing me of racism is unwarranted as most of my friends from college were Turks from Turkey.

Proud of “their heritage and skin”! That was interesting. I think you are confusing African-Americans with Azeris again.

BTW, Asgharzadeh is also not a Professor, but a lecturer. One needs to become assistant, then associate then tenured Professor.

I’ll respond to the rest below with my reply to Asad.

Oh please, now what you are writing is simply slogans and nothing more.

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.