Mehemmed Azadgar – November 2, 2024
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| Dr. Reza Baraheni |
My dear friend Asad Seif asked me some time ago to write an article about Reza Barahani for Avaye Taba'id (Voice of Exile). Naturally, I agreed. But what to write and how to write it in a way that wouldn’t be repetitive, deeply occupied my mind. I considered various ideas and ultimately arrived at what you see here. The reader of this note may have encountered one or two small parts of this writing in my other works.
Əlirza Quluncu (Alirza Quluncu) - October 29, 2024
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| Vahid Qarabağlı |
In an interview with Voice of America, sociologist and political activist Vahid Qarabagli discussed the term "Pan-Turkism," frequently mentioned in Iran's political sphere recently. Qarabagli emphasized that the term is a label used to silence activists fighting for cultural rights and against discrimination in Iranian Azerbaijan.
Milad Balsini – Radio Zamaneh – July 29, 2024
Leila Mekhdi - Caspian Post - 29 March 2024
The animation artist behind a successful short animation film, Hadis, talks about the struggles of Azerbaijani Turks in Iran and the censorship of taboo topics in Azerbaijan.
In May 2023, a short animation film, Hadis, was screened at the largest animation festival in the world, Annecy International Film Festival, becoming a significant event for Nazrin Aghamaliyeva for two reasons. First of all, the film was an homage to Hadis Najafi, a young Azerbaijani Turk in Iran killed during the women-led protests in Iran following the death of Mahsa Amini in September 2022. Secondly, it was Nazrin’s debut as a young animation artist and director. “It was like an Oscar for me,” she says.
Milad Balsini / Asgar Akbarzadeh - Radio Zamaneh - 5 March 2024
February 22, 2024 - Əlirza Quluncu (Alirza Quluncu)
Sociologist and language activist Vahid Qarabagli stated in an interview with Voice of America on International Mother Language Day that the Iranian state is trying to keep the Turkish language at a local level.
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A poster was displayed at one of the Tractor football club's games in Tehran. It reads, "Open schools for Turkish education." |
Qarabagli also says that the Turkish language is central to the civil struggle in Iranian Azerbaijan.
"The civil movement in Southern Azerbaijan and the movement of Turks place language at the center. Because they feel that the Turkish community and the Azerbaijan region are subjected to a form of discrimination through language."
December 03, 2023 - Əlirza Quluncu (Alirza Quluncu)
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| Vahid Qarabagli |
April 28, 2023 - Əlirza Quluncu (Alirza Quluncu)
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Vahid Qarabagli |
Minority Rights Group - 27 April 2023
According to UNESCO, every two weeks one language disappears and at least 43% of the 6,000 spoken languages in the world are in danger of extinction. Language is not only a communication tool, but also an important part of a person’s identity. When a language disappears, traditions, memories, and thus unique ways of thinking and expression also disappear.
Iran is a culturally diverse country composed of many ethnicities, religions, and languages. Though minorities may account for half of Iran’s population, a homogenous national identity rooted in the Persian language and Shi’a Islam has long been imposed upon Iranian citizens, with the effect of the repression, exclusion and marginalization of minority communities.
March 01, 2023 - Alirza Quluncu
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| FILE - Abbas Lisani is seen in this undated photograph from social media. |
A prominent Iranian Azerbaijani civil rights activist freed from prison last week in Iran is publicly defying his court-ordered sentence of “internal exile” in an act of civil disobedience.
Abbas Lisani served more than four years in prison after Iran's Revolutionary Court in Tabriz convicted him in 2019 of "forming groups with the purpose of disrupting national security."
The verdict cited his speeches, media interviews, and participation in protests as evidence of activities to disrupt national security. The long-time activist has spent nearly 10 years total in prison for his civil campaigns, such as taking part in cultural gatherings to mark International Mother Language Day.
December 13, 2022 - Alirza Quluncu
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| Sina Yousefi, Amir Mehdipour and Ghasem Bodi are seen in undated photos from social media. |
As Iran's anti-government protests continue, lawyers who have pledged to provide legal aid to protesters have come under increasing pressure from the country's judiciary and security forces. Since the beginning of nationwide protests in Iran in September, activists say at least 16 human rights lawyers have been arrested across the country, including four recently in the country's East Azerbaijan province.
Local sources say dozens of Azerbaijani-Turkish lawyers are coming under increasing government pressure for criticizing the crackdown on demonstrations and providing legal aid to those arrested during anti-government demonstrations. The East Azerbaijan provincial bar association is allegedly also under scrutiny.
November 21, 2022 - Alirza Quluncu
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Iranian authorities are reportedly detaining dozens of people among the Azerbaijani Turk communities in the country's northwest after a local medical student was killed during an anti-government protest last week.
Aylar Haqqi, a 23-year-old medical student, was killed last Wednesday while attending protests in Tabriz. On Friday, mourners attending her funeral at Tabriz's Vadi Rahmat Cemetery were attacked by Iranian security forces.
Alirza Quluncu - November 11, 2022 - VOA NEWS ON IRAN
As anti-government protests continue across Iran, "freedom, justice and national government" has become a common slogan on the streets of Tabriz, Urmia and Ardabil, the three largest Azerbaijani-Turkish population centers in northwestern Iran.
The demands quickly caught the attention of the country’s other non-Persian communities.
Janice Gassam Asare, Senior Contributor
I help create strategies for more diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Nov 8, 2022
May 23, 2022 - Əlirza Quluncu (Alirza Quluncu)
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| Vahid Qarabagli |
"A sociolinguistic approach to language sees it as a social phenomenon. That is the place of language in society, its influence on society and the influence it receives from society are studied. Language affects our relationships, thoughts and our relationship with institutions in the society we live in. Our language is influenced by these institutions, including television and government institutions," says Qarabagli.
On February 14, the Marand High Court in Iran's northern province of East Azerbaijan ruled that a newborn boy could not be named "Türkay" — a word meaning "Turkish moon" in Turkish.
His parents, disturbed but not surprised by the decision, decided to fight back. Following more than two months of legal battles, the East Azerbaijan Appellate Court in late April decided that the name was not actually on the list of "banned names," and the family could use it for their son.
It was a rare win for ethnic minority families in Iran who have long been frustrated by the government's refusal to allow them to name their children as they wish.
"Finally, another Turk got his ID card," tweeted family lawyer Sina Yousefi in Tabriz alongside the picture of the court decision.
Vahid Qarabagli - April 19, 2022
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| Dr. Reza Baraheni |
Reza Baraheni was one of Iran’s most important literary figures of the 20th and 21st centuries. Polymath novelist, essayist, translator, and public intellectual he was notably considered the “founder of modern literary criticism in Iran”, and was rated “Iran’s finest living poet” in 1977 by Harper’s Magazine. His works have been translated into English, French, Turkish and other languages. Well known as a prominent advocate of freedom of speech, democracy, and minority rights in Iran, he died on March 24, 2022 in Toronto, Canada, where he had lived in exile with his family since 1997. He was 86.
By Haroon Siddiqui Special to the Star - April 2, 2022
Reza Baraheni, indefatigable Iranian dissident and former president of PEN Canada (2001-03), has died, at the age of 86, in Toronto.
He was known as “Iran’s Solzhenitsyn.” “A chronicler of his nation’s torture industry.” “Iran’s finest living poet.”
He had the unique distinction, and ill fortune, of being jailed and tortured by both the regime of the Shah and, after the 1979 revolution, the Islamic Republic. He went into exile twice — in the 1970s to the United States for five years, and then in 1997 to Canada where he settled.
Vahid Qarabagli - January 31, 2022
Vahid Qarabagli - The Caspian Post - December 07, 2021
Amongst Turkey’s fastest-growing exports are its TV drama serials. Known as televizyon dizileri or dizi for short, these are currently watched by an estimated 700 million people in more than 146 countries, from Latin America to the Balkans, the Middle East to Southeast Asia. Worth barely US$100,000 in 2008, dizi-exports have exploded over the past decade and by 2020 were worth an annual $500 million. And that number is expected to double again by 2023. Remarkably, Turkey is now the world’s second-largest exporter of TV drama after the US.
