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| Yunus Shamili |
Political activist Yunes Shameli has commented on the status of the Turkish language in Iranian Azerbaijan and efforts to preserve and promote it. He states, “The Turkish language continues to survive in Iran, but the level of national language consciousness among Turks is very low.”
According to him, “Over the past century, the Iranian state brought the Turkish language to a situation that nearly approached extinction. However, in the last approximately 30 years, with the return to self-awareness and the national movement placing importance on the language, a slow spread of national language consciousness has begun to emerge in society. But it still hasn’t reached a level that encompasses the entire community.”
The political activist emphasizes that protecting the Turkish language fundamentally without state support is not possible. However, according to him, this does not mean that activists should sit idly by and do nothing.
“Serious preservation of a language depends on state support and its incorporation into education—meaning children learning that language in schools—and subsequently establishing a language institution. Of course, activists cannot carry out such tasks because it is beyond their scope. These are tasks that can only be accomplished once a state is established. However, this does not mean activists should just sit and watch, waiting for that moment to come before starting work. It’s not like that. Work must start today, and indeed it has. Writings such as novels, stories, and journalistic reports are being produced. We can see the development of the Turkish language in different fields. For example, recently, the Turkish language has entered the domains of theater and cinema.”
Shameli states that one of the responsibilities of Turkish language activists is to generate interest in the Turkish language among the public:
“I believe that a Turkish activist must at least develop their Turkish to the extent that they can read and write in it, so they can influence society. One of our main issues is creating interest in the Turkish language within the Turkish community. Without this, there is no public inclination to learn and preserve the language. To spark that interest among the people, an activist must themselves have some knowledge of the language.”
Shameli also highlights the significant disagreements among activists regarding adherence to a unified standard for the written language.
“For instance, debates are ongoing about what the standard written language should be. Some consider the language written in Azerbaijan (Republic of Azerbaijan) as the standard, others advocate for the Turkish used in Turkey. Some even believe that we should create our own standard written language in Iran. The perspective of this third group, in my opinion, is truly unfeasible and unrealistic. Creating a standard language requires 100 or 200 years. I think when choosing a standard for the written language, two factors must be considered. The first is that we must adopt the most developed standard. When comparing the written languages of Turkey and Azerbaijan, which is the most advanced? That is the one we should adopt. The second factor is that the standard Turkish written language we choose must be able to compete with Persian. Why? Because our people have been subjected to the assimilation of the Persian language. They perceive Persian as a strong and superior language,” Shameli concludes.
Link to the original interview in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
Yunus Şamili: İranda türk dil haqları fəalları özləri bu dildə ən azı yazıb-oxumağı öyrənməlidirlər