Ethnic Azeri Protests in Iran
Eurasianet has an article on the protests by ethnic Azerbaijanis in northern Iran. With as many as 20 million Azeris living in Armenia’s southern neighbor, there are concerns inside Iran that the demonstrations and rioting are part of a U.S. led scheme to destabilize the Islamic Republic from within. However, the article says that the Azerbaijani government is reluctant to lend its support to its ethnic kin in what Azeri nationalists call South Azerbaijan.
Rioting began in the northern Iranian city of Tabriz on May 19 after a local newspaper published a cartoon depicting a cockroach speaking Azeri. Despite official moves to punish the newspaper and its editors, Azeri discontent rapidly spread across northern Iran, prompting fierce clashes between protesters and security forces. For example, the Turan news agency reported May 28 that roughly 100 Azeris had been killed in the town of Sulduz since the start of the disturbances. As the protests spread, Azeris began voicing demands for better social and economic conditions, as well as greater political rights. Iranian leaders claim that the unrest is being stirred up by foreign governments intent on undermining Tehran’s nuclear research program.
Azerbaijani officials in Baku have pointedly refrained from criticizing Iranian government actions, or from sending signals that could be interpreted as endorsing the ethnic Azeri protesters’ demands. Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Tahir Tagizada emphasized that the protests in northern Iran were “an internal affair of the Islamic Republic,” according to a May 30 report distributed by the Turan news agency. Tagizada indicated that Baku was satisfied with the Iranian government’s handling of events, as well as Tehran’s commitment to ensuring the civil rights of ethnic Azeris.
Interestingly, Eurasianet ran a story on the possible role that Iran’s large Azerbaijani minority could play in 2003, arguing that some U.S. policy-makers are taking the idea very seriously indeed. So far, however, there is no sign that many Azeris are eager to be part of such an “independence” movement.
Washington policy-makers have also expressed an interest in the views of Iranian Azeri cultural rights activist and political dissident Mahmudali Chehregani, a former Tabriz University Professor who was jailed briefly three years ago in Iran, and who currently resides in the United States.
On April 9, he told an audience of policy-makers, diplomats, journalists and students at the Johns Hopkins University Central Asia-Caucasus Institute that a strong sense of Azerbaijani nationalism is growing in Iran, predicting the possibility of Azeri-led unrest unless the demands of this “movement” were met. He predicted “radical changes” in Iran within three to five years, hinting that those changes could emanate from unrest among Iran’s large Azeri population.
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Chehregani backers in Turkey and in the Republic of Azerbaijan have hinted and said publicly that Iran’s Azeri community should unite with Azerbaijan, a view with virtually no support among Iranian Azeris, most on-the-ground observers agree.
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While Iranian Azeris may seek greater cultural rights, few Iranian Azeris display separatist tendencies, or go as far as Chehregani does in predicting ethnic-inspired unrest. Extensive reporting by this author in the three major Azerbaijani provinces of Iran, as well as among Iranian Azeris in Tehran, found that irredentist or unificationist sentiment was not widely held among Iranian Azeris. Few people framed their genuine political, social and economic frustration � feelings that are shared by the majority of Iranians � within an ethnic context.
Still, it’s alarming news given the demographic makeup of the region. Indeed, one local analyst in Armenia has already expressed concern that if military action did take place against Iran, there would be a flood of mainly ethnic Azeri refugees into Armenian-controlled [Azerbaijani] territory surrounding Karabakh. Moreover, there is already an increase in pro-South Azerbaijan blogs on the Internet which suggests that there are those that hope that ethnic discontent in Iran will escalate into something more serious.
The Armenian press is also starting to take the matter seriously, especially now that a South Azerbaijan National Freedom Army has reportedly been formed. Their claims are mainly cultural, but as anyone who has examined similar movements in Turkey and even the mainly Armenian-populated region of Javakheti in the Republic of Georgia knows, such demands are usually just a part of the real picture. Meanwhile, the Azeri media is getting in on the act by alleging that Armenia is ready to support Iran in supressing the protests.
The Armenian ambassador to Iran, Gegam Garibdzhanyan, suggested during secret talks with the Iranian government that his country can send military forces to crush protests in southern Azerbaijan [northwestern Iran], Sirus Azadi, a member of the World Azerbaijani Congress and the committee to support the National Movement of Southern Azerbaijan, has told APA.
There is no doubt that the sides have secured some kind of agreement, Azadi said. “It is possible that special forces will be brought from Armenia to crush protests in southern Azerbaijan.”
According to Arminfo, the Foreign Ministry of the Republic of Armenia has denied such reports, and not least since the APA report couldn’t get the name of the Armenian Ambassador to Iran right.
“As is known, Gegam Garibdzhanyan is Armenia’s deputy foreign minister,” Vladimir Karapetyan, acting press secretary of the Armenian Foreign Ministry, said laconically while commenting on the “sensational” report of the Azerbaijani news agency APA saying that the Armenian side has allegedly “offered military aid to Iran to crush protests in southern Azerbaijan [northwestern Iran]”.
Regardless, any destabilization or unrest in Iran must surely be of concern to Armenia. Any U.S. military action against Iran would make Armenia’s situation in the South Caucasus even more problematic.