Ahmed Kasravi

The period after World War I is one of the important and critical eras in Middle East. The collapse of Ottoman Empire and the formation of the Soviet Union gave a good opportunity to Britain to develop colonization in Middle East in the absence of its old competitors, Ottomans and Russia. On the other hand, the challenges on the Nationalism in Europe waked different nations in Middle East to define their national characteristics such as their history, language, borders… independent to the pervious most effective factor, i.e. Islam. Since this new definition prevented the establishment of any union among those nations, Britain gladly supported the new movements.
In Iran, as a country in Middle East, there was a same plan that was guided by Britain and performed by Reza Shah, the king of Iran, who had gotten the power in a coup, which was supported by Britain. Nevertheless, there was an important difference between nationalism in Iran and other parts of Middle East. Since Iran was a multination country, nationalism could disperse it. Because of the threat of communism, this was unacceptable for Britain. There was no doubt that small countries could join USSR easily. It is significant to note that, communism was new in that time and since Middle Easterners thought that all their difficulties and problems were the result of the imperialism of Britain, there was a tendency toward communism among them. To solve this problem, it is decided that Iran should be changed to a unit nation country.
Iran was the home of various nations such as Turks, Persians, Arabs, Kurds, Baluchs, Turkmen and …. Turks and Persians were the most populous ones. Therefore, Iran should be changed to a unit nation country with Turk or Persian nationality. There were some obvious reasons for why Persian was chosen. The last kingdom of Iran, Gajars, was a Turk kingdom. Since people were not happy with them and they thought that the lag from the developed world was an effect of Gajars Kingdom, they were more prepared to accept a Persian kingdom. Another reason was that, the establishment of a Turk country in the neighborhood of another Turk country, Turkey, could create a union between them that was completely against Britain’s policy. As another reason, the presence of Turk states in USSR and consequently, Turk communist politicians and publications was a threat in the sense that they could support and help communist thoughts in Iran. Another reason was that, there was a tight connection between Turk politicians and the politicians in Baku and Istanbul. It was proved that this connection was very effective in political movements like the constitution movement.
The mentioned reasons as well as some other ones caused that Persian was chosen as the only nationality of Iran. How make Iranians accept this? This was the next step that theoreticians like Ahmad Kasravi did it.
Kasravi started his fight against Turk people of Iran. He theorized and published his idea in a paper that was gladly welcomed by Reza Shah and ultranationalists. Later, Kasravi, by himself, wrote that after writing that paper, he had been accepted in some Britain foundations like London Asian Kingdom Society. In the paper, Kasravi claimed that Azerbaijanis had not been Turk and Turk Kings had changed their language. He supported his idea with claiming that people used to speak in another language, that he called that Azeri and claimed that that was a accent of old Farsi before Turkish be distributed by Turk Kingdom.
He mentioned that the names of rivers, mountains, cities and so on are one of the factors that show the characteristics of the people and their language. Then he divided the names of the cities, mountains . . . of South Azerbaijan into two groups, with-meanings and without-meanings! He put all Turkish names in the second group, claimed that some names are Aryan, and put them in the first one. Although he later confessed that there are some places, mountains … in Turkish but he argued that they were named by Turks later. This was the proof he used to prove that Azerbaijanis were not Turk. He supported his idea with the fact that there are four villages where people speak in Tati, an accent of Old Persian, but he ignored the fact that people in all other villages in Azerbaijan and many villages in other parts of Iran speak Turkish. He highlighted any word similar to Azari in history and called his discovered language Azari, while people use Azari as an abbreviation of Azerbaijani, which is possessive adjective of Azerbaijan and the accent of Turkish that is used in Azerbaijan, is naturally called Azerbaijani Turkish or briefly Azeri Turkish. To support his idea more, he claimed some Tati words as words of Azari. However, it is clear that if language of people in South Azerbaijan was Azeri, there should be many signs instead of just four villages that later proved that were a result of immigration of few Persian people in the time of Sasanian or 17 verses that was in Tati or Taleshi.