User:HistoryofIran/Azerbaijani national identity

Azerbaijani national identity is a term referring to the sense of national identity, as embodied in the shared and characteristic culture, languages and traditions, of the Azerbaijani people.

Formation
Historically, the name "Azerbaijan" referred to the region south of the Aras River, in present-day northwestern Iran. The historical name of the present-day Republic of Azerbaijan was Arran and Shirvan. Before the 20th century, the Azerbaijanis barely constituted as an ethnic group, much less a nation. The people who lived in the present-day country of Azerbaijan identified as either Muslims of the ummah (community), or Turks, who shared a language family spread out throughout a considerable portion of Central Asia, or as Persians. Unlike the Armenians and the Georgians, they employed the Persian alphabet as they lacked their own.

At the end of the 19th-century national identities were not widely accepted notions in the area and in the state of constant change. Both historical Azerbaijan to the south of the Aras River and the Russian-ruled Baku and Elizavetpol governorates to the north were home to a majority of Turkic-speaking people, who were defined differently by opposing ideologies. The Russian imperial government stated that "Azerbaijani Tatars were erroneously called Persians. They were Shiite by denomination and imitated Persians in many ways, but their language is Turkic-Tatar." In order to distinguish them from the other "Tatars" of the empire and the Persian speakers of Iran, the Russian Empire's official documents and numerous published works from the pre-1917 era also referred to them as "Tatar" or "Caucasian Tatars," "Azerbaijani Tatars," and even "Persian Tatars." This came about as a result of all Turkic-speakers being as commonly referred in the Russian language as "Tatar."

Much remained to be done before the peasantry became a nation, and for the locals, religion or regional identification came first. This was a time of ambiguity and debates about Azerbaijani identity. The Tiflis-based publicist, writer, and philosopher Mirza Fatali Akhundov (who is regarded as a nation-builder by both Azerbaijanis and Iranians), considered Iran to be his fatherland while simultaneously classifying his kinsmen as Turki. The influence of Azerbaijan's numerous and diverse pre-Russian conquerors, beginning with the Arab caliphate in the middle of the 7th-century and continuing with the Seljuq Empire, the Mongol Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Iranian dynasties, led to a identity problem for the Azerbaijanis. Their small group of intellectuals hence fluctuated between Iranian, Ottoman, Islamic, and pan-Turkic alignment. Only a small percentage favored an exclusively Azerbaijani identity, which was most strongly supported by Firidun bey Kocharli. The 1900s led to the increase Turkic national sentiments in present-day Azerbaijan as a result of three in quick succession; the Russian Revolution in 1905 and the subsequent Armenian–Tatar massacres of 1905–1907; the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1905 and its failure; and the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, which installed Pan-Turks as the ruling party in the Ottoman Empire.

In present-day Azerbaijan, Pan-Turks stressed their Turkic roots. Attempts were made to describe this newly discovered Turkicness in reference to the Ottoman Turks. The Turkic population of the Ottoman Empire and in Azerbaijan were both identified by Ali bey Huseynzade in his magazine Füyuzat (1906) as descended from the Oghuz Turks, and he asserted that the differences between the two peoples were of minimal significance. He advocated for some sort of union with the Ottoman Empire. This Turkish movement was also supported by publications like Açıq Söz (1915–1918), which was edited by Mahammad Amin Rasulzade. However, the writers in Azärijilar and other thinkers like Jalal Mammad Quluzadä claimed that the Azerbaijani identity had to develop independently of the Ottomans in order to thrive after its recent "recovery" from Iranian dominance.

Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918–1920)
The Turkish ethnolinguistic identity was also opposed by some in Baku at that time. In order to help develop a Persian territorial identity in Baku, they published Azarbayjan, Joz’-e la-yanfakk-e Iran. A non-Persian speaker was easily able to fit into this all-Persian identity at this point because the Iranian identity was still defined by dynasty rule. On May 28, 1918, Mahammad Amin Rasulzade and a group of Azerbaijani nationalist elites proclaimed the formation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, thus ending a century of Russian colonial rule. This marked the start of Azerbaijan as both state and nation.

As the word Tatar was seen as a Russian colonial concept, the leaders of Azerbaijan refused to identify as such. Instead, they referred to the Turkic-speaking Muslim inhabitants of the southeast Caucasus as Turkic. They were known as Türk and Azerbaijani Türk in their native language. Due to the fact that the majority of people continued to identify themselves by religion, Azerbaijani officials also regularly used "Muslim" to refer to the same group. Because the word "Azerbaijan" might also refer to Iranian Azerbaijan and imply a territorial claim, neighboring Iran expressed dissatisfaction when they chose that name for the nation. The phrase "Caucasian Azerbaijan" was thus used in the documents intended for international distribution by the Azerbaijani government to ease Iranian concerns.

Under the Soviet Union (1920–1991)
Several myths about Azerbaijan's history and its links with Iran were created between the time the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1920 and the period that its heritage reappeared as encouragement for the country's new nationalists in the 1980s. The development of Azerbaijan's post-Soviet identity has been substantially impacted by these myths.

One myth was that the Turks were colonized and subjugated by the Persians. According to Eldar Mamedov, this "flies in the face of historical reality. It was the various Turko-Mongol groups that invaded Iran several times, killed millions of Iranians, and ruled over them for several centuries. If any colonization, including linguistic change, was done, it was by Turks." It was the Soviet Union who initially popularized the idea of "Persian colonialism" after it was forced to withdraw its forces from the Iranian province of Azerbaijan in 1946 due to its failure to establish an independent republic there. Another myth was of a united Azerbaijan that was "divided by treacherous Persians" was also established. A southern and a northern Azerbaijan are not mentioned in historical accounts. The existence of two Azerbaijans is not mentioned in any historical or geographical writings in either the Russian Empire or rest of Europe. According to a more recent revisionist theory, Russia and Iran plotted to split up Azerbaijan in the 19th century. Commenting on this, Mamedov states that "Considiering that Iran fought two devastating wars with Russia (1803–1813 and 1824–1828), the idea of a Russo-Iranian conspiracy against Azerbaijan is totally absurd."

Republic of Azerbaijan (1991–present day)
Like all other Soviet successor republics, Azerbaijan had to create a new national identity in alongside dealing with the complicated legacy of the collapse of the Soviet Union. This endeavor was made more challenging by Azerbaijan's short history as a state and nation, as well as the new name of the country. Due to its lengthy and turbulent past, Azerbaijan has a diversified population in terms of ethnicity, religion, and culture. Despite this diversity, though, Iran's high culture—both pre- and post-Islamic—had a significant influence on Azerbaijan until the Soviet era. Nizami Ganjavi and Khaqani, who are amongst the most celebrated authors of Persian poetry and literature, were from present-day Azerbaijan. In addition to writing in Persian, they also drew inspiration from Persian mythology, history, and traditions in their writing.

The Zoroastrian Ateshgah of Baku is one of the remaining examples of pre-Islamic Iranian civilization. Islam ultimately supplanted the Zoroastrianism, just as it did in Iran. Nevertheless, Azerbaijan and Iran still share religious ties, as both countries adhere to Shia Islam.