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| Ibrahim Ramazani |
Iran’s Ministry of Education announced in May last year that the “Persian language proficiency test” would be implemented, highlighting the Supreme Leader’s statements on the importance of learning Persian. Researcher Ibrahim Ramazani told Voice of America in an interview that Seyyed Ali Khamenei’s attitude toward the Turkish and Persian languages seems to have changed in the past year.
According to him, the religious leader, in these turbulent days of the Islamic Republic, is “trying to send a signal to the opposition by presenting the Persian language as a unifying factor.”
In the meeting that Ramazani refers to, Iran's religious leader expressed concern about the “deterioration of the Persian language.” A few days after that meeting, the Ministry of Education, emphasizing Khamenei’s concerns, announced that the “Persian language proficiency test” would be added to regular health tests for preschool children.
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| Iran's religious leader, Seyyed Ali Khamenei, had demanded greater attention be paid to the Persian language by state institutions last May. |
The researcher from the Tabriz Research Institute points out that Khamenei’s statements from last year do not align with what he has said this year:
“Khamenei’s concern about the Persian language—why is it appearing at this time? It seems that what he said last year and what he says this year don’t align... Last year, Khamenei said, ‘Speak Turkish at home with your child.’ But the proficiency test requires that families speak Persian with their children at home. They will need to speak Persian with their children so that when the child takes the test, they will know Persian.”
According to Ibrahim Ramazani, “The Ministry of Education says they implemented this because Khamenei spoke about Persian. But there’s no such thing. It seems that this was something planned beforehand. In other words, they had prepared this in advance and announced it immediately after Khamenei’s statements.”
He emphasizes that the increased focus on the Persian language in today’s political climate is not coincidental:
“Why is Seyyed Ali Khamenei talking about this at this time? Why, despite all the crises in Iran, are they giving so much importance to this issue? The economy is collapsing, and there could be war... Because Seyyed Ali Khamenei and the Ministry of Education see Persian as a unifying factor. Why do I say this? Because both the Islamic Republic and its opponents, inside and outside the country, are in agreement on Persian. Khamenei sees this consensus, and even in such a time of crisis, bringing this initiative forward is a signal to the opposition. They are telling the opposition that Persian is the unifying factor and that you can see our sensitivity to preserving Persian.”
Link to the original interview in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
İbrahim Ramazani: Xameneyinin türkcə ilə farscaya olan münasibəti arasında təzad var