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| Danyal Babayani |
Turkmen activist and former political prisoner Danyal Babayani spoke with Voice of America about the ethnic and religious discrimination faced by Turkmens living in Iran's Turkmen Sahra region, as well as his own experiences with imprisonment and trial at the age of 18 due to his activism.
According to Babayani, the Iranian court initially charged them with espionage and pan-Turkism for their activities advocating for the religious, cultural, and linguistic rights of Sunni Hanafi Turkmens, but they had no evidence to support these accusations.
“We three were working on websites about Turkmen culture, religion (Hanafi sect), and language in Turkmen Sahra. The government found out, understood, and arrested us. Initially, the court charged us with espionage, but later withdrew it... We were also involved in activities related to the Turkmen language. That's why they called us pan-Turkists, but since they found no evidence, they sentenced us for anti-state propaganda,” the young activist describes the trial process.
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| Turkmen Sahra Region - Iran |
Babayani states that the Iranian authorities are promoting Shiism in Sunni regions. “They are trying to convert us to Shiism, but thank God the people are resisting. If they hadn't resisted, we would have been assimilated by now,” he says.
The former political prisoner also discusses other activists imprisoned for advocating for Turkmen rights. He provides information to Voice of America about the situation of Turkmen physicist, Omid Kokabee, who is held in Evin prison and recognized by Amnesty International as a “prisoner of conscience.”
According to Babayani, Kokabee was arrested because he did not cooperate with Iran's military industries and security agencies.
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| Omid Kokabee, a Turkmen physicist from Iran affiliated with the University of Texas at Austin, is imprisoned in Evin Prison in Tehran. |
Living as a refugee in Turkey, Babayani emphasizes that the Turkmen population in Turkmen Sahra faces economic discrimination, particularly in employment due to their ethnic and religious affiliation.
“Turkmens are not appointed to high positions in government institutions, firstly because they are Turkmen, and secondly because they are Sunni Hanafi. They are denied their rights in employment,” he explains.
Babayani, citing unofficial sources, estimates that approximately 3 million Turkmens live in Iran and emphasizes that the government views them as second-class citizens.
Babayani also points out that many of the ecological problems in the Turkmen Sahra region are contributing to the worsening economic conditions of the Turkmen, who primarily engage in agriculture:
“Turkmens are generally involved in agriculture. Therefore, the economic situation is bad. There was a drought, the waters dried up. This happened because of dams and levees built by the government. Our lakes dried up...”
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| The renowned religious scholar of Turkmen Sahra, Mowlana Gergic |
The Turkmen activist draws attention to the bloody suppression of mass protests in the Turkmen Sahra region following the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, and states that the atmosphere of fear created by the massacres still lingers today.
Gonbad Kavus (Turkmen: Kümmet Gowuz) is the largest city in Iran with a majority Turkmen population. Turkmens also live in many areas of Golestan, North Khorasan, and Razavi Khorasan. These regions, located in the south of Turkmenistan, are known as Turkmen Sahra.