Alirza Quluncu, Voice of America, February 17, 2023
The Iranian Civil Registration Office in Tabriz has refused to issue an identity card for a newborn child named Volkan, chosen by the Azermi Rad family.
According to information obtained from human rights defenders operating in the region by Voice of America, the Azermi Rad family has been unable to obtain an identity card for their son, who was born three weeks ago, due to the name they selected. The Registration Office refuses to issue the identity card, claiming that the name "Volkan" is "foreign."
Many families in Iranian Azerbaijan and Tehran are forced to fight for months or even years in order to obtain an identity card for their children with the Turkish names they choose. Some of these families, in addition to appealing to various state institutions, also attempt to make their voices heard through social media.
In recent years, the number of families in various provinces of Iran with Turkish populations who choose Turkish names for their children has increased significantly. Families prefer to give their children names that are especially popular in Turkey. In various cities, civil registration offices refuse to issue identity cards, arguing that the name chosen by the family is "foreign" or "not on the list."
Farhad Jafari, the author of the "Turkish Human Names" dictionary, published in Iran in 2001, previously told Voice of America in an interview that the situation was even worse in the 1990s.
"I tell those who want to give their children, store, or company a Turkish name that no preventive law has been written regarding names. But they (state institutions) are instructed to do everything they can to prevent a Turkish name from being given. They create a situation where the person goes back and forth for days, and then, exhausted, gives up, saying, 'Whatever the name is, let it be,'" Jafari said in the interview.
Since the Pahlavi era, many cities, villages, rivers, mountains, and other places in Iran, particularly in Iranian Azerbaijan, that had Turkish names have been renamed in Persian. In 2014, the former deputy governor of West Azerbaijan province, Hadi Bahadiri, noted that "about 2,000 historical Turkish names were changed" during the Pahlavi period and afterward.
Link to the original text in Turkish on the Azerbaijani section of Voice of America:
Təbriz qeydiyyat idarəsi Volkan adlı uşağa şəxsiyyət vəsiqəsi vermir