Azerbaijanis

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Azerbaijanis: boy and girl

Azerbaijanis or Azeris (own names Azərbaycanlılar and Azərilər ) are a Turkic-speaking ethnic group of Western Asia . Their settlement area extends from northwest Iran to the Republic of Azerbaijan .

Because of the close linguistic relationship to the Turks, many Azerbaijanis sometimes refer to themselves as Azerbaijani Turks (Azərbaycan Türkləri) and in Iran are called Azari ( Persian آذری Āẓarī ), and known as Azeri in Turkey. In the past, the foreign designation “ Tatars ” was also common.

language

The language of the Azerbaijanis, Azerbaijani ( so called in the independent Azerbaijan 1918–20 , called the Turkish language in the early Soviet period , then again the Azerbaijani language), is counted as part of the (West) Oghusian branch of the Turkic languages . It is therefore closely related to Turkish and Gagauz and somewhat more distantly to Turkmen .

religion

The majority of Azerbaijanis are followers of the Twelve Shia . Religious minorities are Sunnis (mostly Hanafi ), Zoroastrians , Christians and Baha'i . Some of the Azerbaijanis in the Republic of Azerbaijan are religiousless, many describe themselves as culturally Muslim . There are a small number of Naqshbandi (a Sufi order) among Muslims , especially in Dagestan . The approximately 5,000 Christian Azerbaijanis in Azerbaijan mostly consist of people who have recently converted. Some rural Azerbaijanis still display elements of pre-Islamic animistic religion, such as belief in holy places and the worship of trees and rocks. In Azerbaijan, besides the Muslim festivals, other religious days such as Christmas and Nouruz are also traditionally celebrated. After the collapse of the Soviet Union , however, Islam experienced a rebirth. More and more people turned to Islam again. A recent study shows that radical Islam is growing in Azerbaijan.

number

The settlement area of ​​the Azerbaijanis

There are said to be around 30 to 32 million Azerbaijanis worldwide, although the exact number is highly controversial. Live it in

Azerbaijanis in Iran

About twice as many Azerbaijanis live in Iran as in Azerbaijan; the Iranian government speaks of 15 million Azerbaijanis in Iran, Azerbaijani nationalists of 60 million. According to the 2018 Fischer World Almanac, it is 24% (around 19 million) of the population of Iran.

The Azerbaijanis supported the Islamic Revolution in 1979 because they hoped it would liberate themselves from the Persian chauvinism of the Pahlavi dynasty . However, the Islamic Republic has retained Persian nationalism, which is why Azerbaijani allegiance to the political system has declined. However, they do not feel as marginalized as they did during the Pahlavi period. The Azerbaijanis in Iran can develop by adapting to the Persian majority. They play an important role in the Iranian armed forces and hold large parts of the Tehran bazaar in their hands. The Iranian religious leader Ali Khamenei is also of Azerbaijani origin on his father's side. The inhabitants of the Republic of Azerbaijan feel more progressive and less religious and are therefore skeptical of the Azerbaijanis in Iran. The existence of the independent Republic of Azerbaijan is a challenge for the Iranian leadership because it can offer its inhabitants a higher standard of living than Iran due to its natural resources in relation to the small population. There is therefore a risk that dissatisfaction among Azerbaijani people on the Iranian side of the border will acquire an ethnic component, which will put a certain strain on Azerbaijani-Iranian relations .

See also

literature

  • Jacob M. Landau, Barbara Kellner-Heinkele: Politics of Language in the Ex-Soviet Muslim States - Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan . London 2001. ISBN 1-85065-442-5

Web links

Commons : Azerbaijanis  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wiktionary: Azerbaijanis  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica: Azerbaijani
  2. ↑ See this language map of Iran from Columbia State University . Azerbaijani in the northwest (light green under the name Azeri, not to be confused with the Iranian language Tati or Azari marked in yellow). The Shahsewenen are a traditionally nomadic dialect group.
  3. ↑ Audrey L. Old Town: The Azerbaijani Turks
  4. ↑ Report by Hürriyet
  5. ↑ Report from Agos
  6. ↑ Kevin Boyle, Juliet Sheen: Freedom of Religion and Belief . Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0-415-15978-4 , p. 273
  7. ^ Azerbaijan , US Library of Congress Country Studies . Retrieved June 7, 2006.
  8. ↑ Azerbaijan , US State Department , October 26, 2001, Retrieved June 9, 2006.
  9. ↑ Internal factors of Islamic radicalization . ( Memento from February 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: RIA Dagestan ( Russian )
  10. ↑ 5,000 Azeris Azerbaijanis adopted Christianity . Day.az. Retrieved July 7, 2007 ( Russian )
  11. ↑ Azerbaijan: Culture and Art . Embassy of the Azerbaijan Republic in the People's Republic of China.
  12. ^ ISN Security Watch - Azerbaijan young increasingly drawn to Islam . Isn.ethz.ch. Retrieved June 29, 2009.
  13. ↑ jamestown.org
  14. ^ Avraham Sela: Continuum Political Encyclopedia of the Middle East: Revised and Updated Edition . Bloomsbury Academic, 2002, ISBN 978-0-8264-1413-7 ( google.com [accessed August 28, 2018]).
  15. ↑ Fischer World Almanac 2018
  16. ^ Elling, Rasmus Christian. Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Excerpt: "The number of Azeris in Iran is heavily disputed. In 2005, Amanolahi estimated all Turkic-speaking communities in Iran to number no more than 9 million. CIA and Library of congress estimates range from 16 percent to 24 percent — that is, 12-18 million people if we employ the latest total figure for Iran's population (77.8 million). Azeri ethnicsts, on the other hand, argue that overall number is much higher , even as much as 50 percent or more of the total population. Such inflated estimates may have influenced some Western scholars who suggest that up to 30 percent (that is, some 23 million today) Iranians are Azeris. "
  17. ↑ Iran: People . In: CIA: The World Factbook . 16% of the total population of Iran; corresponds to approx.12,500,000.
  18. ^ Svante E. Cornell : Azerbaijan since independence . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 2011, ISBN 0-7656-3003-6 , pp. 318 .
  19. ^ Elling, Rasmus Christian. Minorities in Iran: Nationalism and Ethnicity after Khomeini, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Excerpt: "The number of Azeris in Iran is heavily disputed. In 2005, Amanolahi estimated all Turkic-speaking communities in Iran to number no more than 9 million. CIA and Library of congress estimates range from 16 percent to 24 percent — that is, 12-18 million people if we employ the latest total figure for Iran's population (77.8 million). Azeri ethnicsts, on the other hand, argue that overall number is much higher , even as much as 50 percent or more of the total population. Such inflated estimates may have influenced some Western scholars who suggest that up to 30 percent (that is, some 23 million today) Iranians are Azeris. "
  20. ^ A b Svante E. Cornell: Azerbaijan since independence . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 2011, pp. 320 .
  21. ↑ Houman A. Sadri and Omar Vera-Muñiz: Iranian relations with the South Caucasus . In: Thomas Juneau and Sam Razavi (eds.): Iranian Foreign Policy since 2001 . Routledge, Abingdon 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-82743-0 , pp. 147 .
  22. ^ Svante E. Cornell: Azerbaijan since independence . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 2011, pp. 319 .
  23. ^ Svante E. Cornell: Azerbaijan since independence . Sharpe, Armonk, NY 2011, pp. 336 .