Yashar Gulshen - October 7, 2013
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| Ali Moalem Damghani: "Azeris have never had Turkish ancestry." |
Recently, Ali Moalem Damghani, the president of Iran’s Academy of Arts, stated in a note that “the Azeris, who have never had Turkish ancestry, are claiming desert wanderer and barbarism as a result of the dominance of the language of the guest tribes, after their civilization. Suddenly, they disregard the pride and greatness of their culture and ancestry.” According to his statement, Azerbaijanis are not Turks; they claim to be Turks due to the dominance of the guest tribes, the Turks are desert dwellers and savages, and as a result, the "Azeris" were civilized because they had an Iranian culture before the dominance of the language of these guest tribes. He also adds in his writing, “The culture of the East is the mother of all cultures, and the mother of Eastern cultures is Iranian culture.” Unfortunately, Ali Moalem does not explain the specifics of the Iranian culture he refers to.
Ali Moalem is one of the poets of the first generation of the Islamic Republic and the Velayat-e-Faqih system. Many of the prominent poems of the Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War were written by him, such as: “Read this season with me, the rest is a tale / I have read this season a lot, it is passionate.” He also wrote the Masnavi Hijrat in praise of Ruhollah Khomeini. During the Islamic regime, he held important positions such as Deputy Cultural Director of the Islamic Propagation Organization’s Art Bureau, member of the Poetry Council of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, and head of the Music Department of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Ali Moalem Damghani is one of the poets who writes in praise of the Islamic Revolution and mysticism in contemporary times. In 2009, he was appointed as the second president of the Academy of Arts of the Islamic Republic of Iran by the President, according to a decree from the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution.
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| Ali Moalem Damghani, Iranian poet |
With this view of his poetry and political and artistic life, it is clear that, in his eyes—someone who writes poetry in praise of the Islamic Revolution and mysticism—Iranian culture cannot be defined other than by this government and the rule of Velayat-e-Faqih, and “savagery” of the Turks must also find its definition in comparison to this framework.
However, my point here is not to analyze the life and personal understanding of Ali Moalem Damghani. The point is that the majority of so-called intellectuals, scholars, writers, artists, and politicians of the Pan-Iranian system are all versions of Ali Moalem Damghani. It is true that Ali Moalem belongs to the more reactionary wing of this regime, but are the so-called reformists, who constitute the so-called left wing of this regime, foreign to such views? Haven’t some of Iran’s prominent singers, such as Mohammad Esfahani, Mohammadreza Shajarian, and Majid Akhshabi, sung his poems? Did not Khatami and the cleric who is now the vice president, supported by the reformists, humiliate the Turks in their joke-filled speeches in parliament? Haven’t terms like “ethnic group” and “subculture” been used for the Turks by this group of reformists? Wasn’t the notion of the Turks being slaves, learning the art of governance from the “intelligent Iranian ministers” under the supervision of the reformists, printed in textbooks? Wasn’t the newspaper that called Turks cockroaches under the guidance of reformists from Khatami’s era? Isn’t the new Minister of Culture of this government, in his discourse on expanding the Iranian language and culture, saying similar things to Ali Moalem Damghani?
In fact, whether it’s the government or the opposition to it, except for a few rare cases, who among them holds a different opinion about Iranian culture and the Turks than what Ali Moalem Damghani clearly expresses? Many of those who pose as intellectuals, if they speak their true feelings and stop hiding their opposition to Turkish culture under the guise of fighting Pan-Turkism, what they say boils down to the fact that the people of Azerbaijan were not originally Turks and became Turkic speakers due to the Mongol invasion.
Even if Ali Moalem Damghani seems like a despicable individual, he is a symbol of a large group whose thoughts and actions are tainted with racism, even though some of them may disguise it in other rhetoric. Politically, he is definitely the opposite of many of the government’s reformists and almost in opposition to all the regime’s opposition, but he can be certain that with his precious words, in which he calls Iranian culture the mother of all cultures, he absolves himself of any taint caused by praising the Islamic government and endears himself to all those who, even if they are bitter enemies of the Islamic regime, place admirers of Iranian culture and enemies of Turks on a pedestal.