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| Sevil Suleymani |
The #Manofarsi (Me and Persian) campaign, initiated by Turkish language rights activists, has already become a social media movement with the support of thousands of social media users from various non-Persian communities in Iran.
In an interview with Voice of America, sociologist Sevil Suleymani, one of the initiators of the campaign, says that this campaign provided an opportunity for people who have faced the same oppression and discrimination to share their common struggles and traumas.
For over ten days, thousands of users from Iran’s Turkish, Arab, Kurdish, Turkmen, Baloch, Gilaki, Lur, and other ethnic communities have shared their experiences of discrimination in various periods of their lives under the #Manofarsi hashtag.
Sevil Suleymani notes that the idea for this campaign came from her own personal experiences.
“The idea for this campaign came from my own personal experience, where I shared what I went through on my first day of school. On that day, the teacher spoke in Persian. I couldn’t understand those descriptions and conversations. I didn’t understand anything. The fear and trauma I experienced during those days stayed with me for years. After sharing this on Facebook one day, I received many messages from others who had gone through the same experience,” she says. “This made me think that we have a common struggle. We’ve gone through the same experiences, the same oppressions. However, our stories have never been reflected in Iran’s media, academia, or books. Even when we talk about them, we are ridiculed.”
The #Manofarsi campaign was launched by the "End Monolingualism in Iran!" initiative, which Sevil Suleymani is also a part of.
“We started the End Monolingualism in Iran! campaign last year. This year, we decided to start a campaign for International Mother Language Day and ask non-Persians to share their experiences related to the imposed language. We wanted these to be documented. We had chosen a different hashtag. But one of the Twitter users shared their experience under the #Manofarsi hashtag. This hashtag made it clear that people could write about everything they had gone through related to the Persian language. [Non-Persians’] experiences with Persian could be a trauma. Because as Turks, we cannot pronounce certain sounds like Persians do. This always makes us a target for ridicule. With #Manofarsi, that story is in the hands of the person who understands it. They can take it wherever they want.”
Iranian officials and state media have reacted harshly to the #Manofarsi campaign. Sevil Suleymani says that while she expected reactions from pan-Iranist forces, she did not anticipate these reactions reaching the state level.
“I didn’t think the campaign would spread this widely,” she says. “I knew it would spread. I knew that people had gone through this pain. But the insults are so deep within Iranian society that even Turks don’t discuss these issues among themselves. For the first time, thanks to this campaign, those veils were lifted. Now, people openly share, without feeling ashamed or insulted, saying that even though I am a professor now, I went through these things in my first grade. Or when I spoke at the university, everyone laughed at me. I expected reactions from pan-Iranist forces. But the fact that these reactions reached the state level shows how widespread this hashtag has become. It shows that this campaign was able to target the foundation of the Iranian state, that is, Persian nationalism.”
The sociologist adds that under the #Manofarsi hashtag, stories combining racism and sexism have also emerged.
“When you look at the hashtags, there are many stories about racism. There are insults related to gender. People write, ‘Because I am a Turkish woman, they said this to me,’ or ‘Because I am a Gilaki woman, they said this to me.’ These experiences were not limited to what happened in the first grade. The campaign revealed the pain of all the oppressed identities. This was one of the biggest successes of the campaign,” the sociologist adds.
Link to the original interview in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
Sevil Süleymani: #Manofarsi kampaniyası İranda qeyri-farslara ortaq dərdlərini anlatmaq üçün bir imkan yaratdı