Hamid Melikoglu, Voice of America, August 14, 2022
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| National Organization for Civil Registration of Iran |
Reports continue to emerge in Iranian Azerbaijan about families choosing Turkish names for their children and the Iranian Civil Registration Office's opposition to such names.
The Human Rights Activists (HRA) news agency has reported this issue as a violation of human rights, stating that the Urmia Civil Registration Office refused to issue an identity card for a child named "Atahan," a resident of Urmia. The office officials informed the child's parents that they should choose another name for their child, but the parents insisted on the name they had selected.
For years, political activists in Iran have criticized the Islamic Republic's policy of interfering in the personal and family matters of its citizens. In addition to restrictions on clothing, food and drink choices, and bans on activities such as women riding bicycles, limitations on parents choosing names for their children are among the restrictions imposed on citizens' private affairs by the Islamic Republic.Based on a particular ideology, the Iranian Civil Registration Office has applied ethnic and religious restrictions on names and published a list of approved names, requiring parents to choose one from this list. The Registration Office also imposes restrictions on the spelling and orthography of some Turkish names. As a result, families who request that names be written in Turkish orthography are met with opposition.
According to information obtained by Voice of America, in cities of Iranian Azerbaijan, civil registration officers are offering foreign names as alternatives to Turkish names for families.
Currently, many Azerbaijani children in Iran are still waiting for the Civil Registration Office to approve their names. Some of these children have even reached the age to enroll in school. In some cases, courts have upheld the families' appeals, ruling in their favor, allowing them to obtain identity cards for their children with the names they requested based on the court's ruling.
In an interview with IRNA news agency, Vice President for Women and Family Affairs, Anisa Khazali, referenced statistics from a few years ago, stating that there are currently one million people across the country without identity cards, approximately 400,000 of whom are children.
Link to the original text in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
Urmiyədə bir uşağa türk adına görə şəxsiyyət vəsiqəsi verilmədiyi bildirilir