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I have attempted here to compare and contrast state policies towards Azeris in Iran and Kurds in Turkey. It is most crucial, however, to note that I shall analyze these policies, not from the point of view of these two minorities, but rather, Machiavellian as it may seem, from the point of view of Teheran and Ankara. Attention is focused on the soundness of the mechanics of two similar objectives sought by Teheran and Ankara, namely state loyalty, with strikingly dissimilar results. This study endeavors to demonstrate the reasons for the success of one policy and the failure of the other. Its utility may well he in implications for reversing what is an unsuccessful Turkish domestic ethnic policy that has come under increasing international criticism and contributed to many embarrassing economic and political rebuffs from her European allies.
Both Iran and Turkey contain within their borders a sizable ethnic minority whose characteristics display a surprising bilateral symmetry: A very large minority of Turkic-speaking people, the Azeris, live in Iran; a proportionately large number of Iranic-speaking people, the Kurds, live in Turkey.1 The largest minorities in dieir respective states, each group comprises approximately one fifth of the total population. Both are primarily concentrated in a single comer of these countries; both have large diasporas of urban and economic immigrants in the national capitals and in odier major cities. Like the majority of Iranians, the Azeris are predominantly Shi'ite Muslims; the Kurds, like the majority of Turks, are mainly (and at least nominally) Sunni. The Iranic-speaking Kurds are concentrated on the southeastern comer of Turkey bordering Iran; the Turkic-speaking Azeris inhabit northwestern Iran bordering on Turkey. The edinic territories of both peoples stretch from the borders towards the national capital like an avenue, with some pockets of their population only miles from these cities. Kurds and Azeris are also represented by large communities outside the borders of Turkey and Iran in the neighboring states (see map).
Both Azeris and Kurds are told by their respective governments that they are not who they believe themselves to be: Teheran insists that the Azeris are an Iranic people who recently lost their original Indo-European language to Turkic Azeri;3 conversely, Ankara alleges that the Kurds are 'mountain Turks' who...