Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Azerbaijani-Mongolian cultural relations


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus‎__EXPECTED_UNCONNECTED_PAGE__ to delete, but consensus to do something - most likely some significant editing via collaboration and talk page discussion, and potentially having a conversation on the talk page of a rename and/or refocus for the article. Daniel (talk) 00:55, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Azerbaijani-Mongolian cultural relations

 * – ( View AfD View log | edits since nomination)

Article is one big WP:OR mess. Not sure where even to start.

This article is named "Azerbaijani-Mongolian cultural relations", yet talks about Turks (which is a huge group, Turkic peoples) the vast majority of the time, which makes sense, considering the Azerbaijanis were not even close to forming an ethnonym at this time (we're talking multiple centuries here). The article quite bizarrely tries to claim all Turks in the area and period as "Azerbaijani", which is pure historical revisionism. This is not surprising, considering the article was translated from the Azerbaijani Wikipedia (where even the ancient Manneans are claimed as "Turks" in "Azerbaijani" land), literally a mirror of all the historical revisionism/negationism campaigned by the government of Azerbaijan and its predecessor governments, all the way to the early Soviet era. Wikipedia even has an article and a whole section dedicated to it Historical_negationism and Falsification of history in Azerbaijan.

The article also uses the irredentist term "South Azerbaijan", also part of the same historical revisionism. It also cites a lot of "sources" published in Azerbaijan, which are not WP:RS, as the country is notorious in scholarship for campaigning for this kind of historical revisionism/negationism.

Sources that are actually WP:RS such as the Yarshater citation is used to mention info about the Turks in the Ilkhanate army, which is indeed mentioned in the source, but what does it have to do with the Azerbaijanis? Nothing.

Besides the two articles I just mentioned, there are countless other sources (listed down below) which also report on the Azerbaijanis not being an ethnonym at this time (first really started emerging in 1918 and the 1930s with that name and the identity they have today) and the historical revisionism/negationism heavily pushed by Azerbaijan since Soviet times. This is unanimous in scholarship. HistoryofIran (talk) 21:32, 12 December 2023 (UTC)


 * "Russian sources cited in this study refer to the Turkish-speaking Muslims (Shi’a and Sunni) as “Tatars” or, when coupled with the Kurds (except the Yezidis), as “Muslims.” The vast majority of the Muslim population of the province was Shi’a. Unlike the Armenians and Georgians, the Tatars did not have their own alphabet and used the Arabo-Persian script. After 1918, and especially during the Soviet era, this group identified itself as Azerbaijani. " -- Bournoutian, George (2018). Armenia and Imperial Decline: The Yerevan Province, 1900-1914. Routledge. p. 35 (note 25).
 * "The third major nation in South Caucasia,19 the Azerbaijanis, hardly existed as an ethnic group, let alone a nation, before the twentieth century . The inhabitants of the territory now occupied by Azerbaijan defined themselves as Muslims, members of the Muslim umma; or as Turks, members of a language group spread over a vast area of Central Asia; or as Persians (the founder of Azerbaijani literature, Mirza Fath’ Ali Akhundzadä, described himself as ‘almost Persian’). ‘Azerbaijani identity remained fluid and hybrid’ comments R. G. Suny (1999–2000: 160). As late as 1900, the Azerbaijanis remained divided into six tribal groups – the Airumy, Karapapakh, Pavlari, Shakhsereny, Karadagtsy and Afshavy. The key period of the formation of the Azerbaijani nation lies between the 1905 revolution and the establishment of the independent People’s Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918 (Altstadt, 1992: 95) ." -- Ben Fowkes (2002). Ethnicity and Conflict in the Post-Communist World. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 14
 * "As hinted earlier, the history of Azerbaijan and of the growth of an Azerbaijani ethnie is more problematic than the other two cases . The lack of a clear way of differentiating between the various Turkic languages spoken and written in medieval and early modern times is one of the difficulties. Another is the absence until the twentieth century of an Azerbaijani state ." -- idem, p. 35
 * "In the case of the third major ethnic group of South Caucasus, the Azerbaijanis, the path towards nationhood was strewn with obstacles. First, there was uncertainty about Azerbaijani ethnic identity, which was a result of the influence of Azerbaijan’s many and varied pre-Russian conquerors, starting with the Arabs in the mid-seventh century and continuing with the Saljuq Turks, the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks and the Iranians. Hence the relatively small local intelligentsia wavered between Iranian, Ottoman, Islamic, and pan-Turkic orientations. Only a minority supported a specifically Azerbaijani identity, as advocated most prominently by Färidun bäy Köchärli. " -- idem, p. 68
 * "Azerbaijani national identity emerged in post-Persian Russian-ruled East Caucasia at the end of the nineteenth century, and was finally forged during the early Soviet period." -- Gasimov, Zaur (2022). "Observing Iran from Baku: Iranian Studies in Soviet and Post-Soviet Azerbaijan". Iranian Studies. 55 (1): page 37
 * "In fact, the change in defining national identity in Azerbaijan was a result of a combination of developments in the 1930s in Turkey, Iran, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The article concludes that these developments left Soviet rulers no choice but to construct an independent Azerbaijani identity." -- Harun Yilmaz (2013). "The Soviet Union and the Construction of Azerbaijani National Identity in the 1930s". Iranian Studies. 46 (4). p. 511
 * "A group of Azerbaijani nationalist elites, led by M.A. Rasulzada, declared independence for the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) on 28 May 1918. After a century of Russian colonial rule, the emergent Azerbaijani nation established its first nation-state. Not only was it a new state but also it was a new nation. Because they previously had lacked a distinct national identity, the Azerbaijani Turks had been called “Caucasian Muslims” or “Tatars,” a common term used for the subject Muslim population in the Tsarist Russian empire (Мишиjeв, 1987, p. 159). The Azerbaijani identity and nation were new constructions of nationalists of the late 19th century, culminating in the establishment of the ADR."  Ahmadoghlu, R. Secular nationalist revolution and the construction of the Azerbaijani identity, nation and state. Nations and Nationalism. 2021; 27. Wiley Online Library. p. 549
 * "Azerbaijan first tried to create a national identity in 1918 at the time of the formation of the first Azerbaijan republic. Because of linguistic factors and despite its deep and long connection with Iran, Azerbaijan constructed its identity on the basis of Turkism and even pan-Turkism." Eldar Mamedov (2017). The New Geopolitics of the South Caucasus: Prospects for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Resolution: Azerbaijan Twenty-Five Years after Independence: Accomplishments and Shortcomings. Edited by Shireen Hunter. Lexington Books. p. 29
 * "In the pre-national era, both north and the south of the Aras River (Shervan, Mughan, Qarabagh, and Azerbaijan) were provinces, akin to Lorestan or Khorasan of an all-Iranian imperial structure. Following the Russian conquest of the Turkic-speaking regions in the South Caucasus in the nineteenth century, a thin layer of intelligentsia emerged in Baku and began discussing the characteristics of a distinct Azerbaijani identity. The Republic of Azerbaijan was established in May 1918 by the same elite. This short experience was abruptly halted when the Red Army occupied Transcaucasia in 1920/21. Subsequently, the Bolsheviks launched their modern, state-driven nation building projects in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. Contemporary Azerbaijanis are Turkic-speakers and their national history could be centered on a Turkic ethno-linguistic identity. Nevertheless, for reasons discussed elsewhere, the Bolsheviks did not prefer this solution. The Azerbaijani national identity and historical narrative constructed after 1937 stressed the indigenous nature of the Azerbaijani people and was based on a territorial definition. The territorial approach found support at the highest level—from Joseph Stalin himself." -- Yilmaz, H. (2015). A Family Quarrel: Azerbaijani Historians against Soviet Iranologists. Iranian Studies, 48(5), p. 770
 * "Even as the ethnogenesis of the Azerbaijanis continues to be a matter of academic debate, most scholars agree that Azerbaijan, as a national entity, emerged after 1918, with the declaration of the first Republic of Azerbaijan after Word War I" -- p. 585, Gippert, Jost and Dum-Tragut, Jasmine. Caucasian Albania: An International Handbook, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2023.
 * "At the beginning of the 20th century, the heavily used name “Turks” for the Muslims of eastern Caucasus was replaced by the term “Azerbaijani.” It has dominated since the 1930s as a result of the Soviet policy of indigenization, largely promoted by Josef Stalin" - p. 254, After the Soviet Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 05 Oct. 2015.
 * "Besides Azerbaijan, which as a historical territory in the 12th century has been illustrated in the maps of that era as an area in modern northwestern Iran and distinguished from Arrān, we should mention the term “Azerbaijani”. Prior to the late 19th century and early 20th century, the term “Azerbaijani” and “Azerbaijani Turk” had never been used as an ethnonym. Such ethnonyms did not exist. During the 19th century and early 20th century, Russian sources primarily referred to the Turcophone Muslim population as “Tatars” which was a general term that included a variety of Turkish speaker. Under the Mussavatist government, in 1918 and during the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan, the term “Azeri people” referred to all inhabitants while the Turkish-speaking portion was called “Azeri Turk”. Thus the concept of an Azeri identity barely appears at all before 1920 and Azerbaijan before this era had been a simple geographical area." -- pp. 16-17, Lornejad, Siavash; Doostzadeh, Ali (2012). Arakelova, Victoria; Asatrian, Garnik (eds.). On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi (PDF). Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies.
 * "Until the late 19th and early 20th century it would be unthinkable to refer to the Muslim inhabitants of the Caucasus as Azaris (Azeris) or Azerbaijanis, since the people and the geographical region that bore these names were located to the south of the Araxes River. Therefore, the Iranian intelligentsia raised eyebrows once the independent Republic of Azerbaijan was declared in 1918 just across the Iranian border. - pp. 176-177, Avetikian, Gevorg. "Pān-torkism va Irān [Pan-Turkism and Iran]", Iran and the Caucasus 14, 1 (2010), Brill


 * "The republication of classical and medieval sources with omissions, with the replacement of the term "Armenian state" by "Albanian state" and with other distortions of the original manuscripts was another way to play down the Armenian role in early and medieval Transcaucasia. ... The Azeri scholars did all of this by order of the Soviet and Party authorities of Azerbaijan, rather than through free will." Victor Schnirelmann. The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia. Senri Ethnological Studies. pp. 160, 196–97


 * "Bournoutian’s scholarship has always been relevant. However, today it is even more essential as Armenia and Artsakh are facing monumental challenges due to the 2020 Artsakh War. One of these challenges deals with the intentional falsification of Artsakh’s history by Azeri scholars and their acolytes in the West. Bournoutian has been on the forefront of combatting this revisionist history, which has now infiltrated western academia through Azeri-funded centers and thanks to some Western scholars who seem infatuated by the Aliyev regime." -- Bedross Der Matossian, In Memoriam, Dr. George Bournoutian (1943–2021)


 * "Scholars should be on guard when using Soviet and post-Soviet Azeri editions of Azeri, Persian, and even Russian and Western European sources printed in Baku. These have been edited to remove references to Armenians and have been distributed in large numbers in recent years. When utilizing such sources, the researchers should seek out pre-Soviet editions wherever possible." -- Robert Hewsen. Armenia: A Historical Atlas. University of Chicago Press, 2001. p. 291


 * "It should be noted that such falsifications with regards to the regional history of Iranians and other groups, to the point of denial and falsification of their history (e.g. denial of Armenian, Greek and Assyrian genocides due to modern Turkic nationalism or claims that many Iranian figures and societies starting from the Medes, Scythians and Parthians were Turks), are still prevalent in countries that adhere to Pan-Turkist nationalism such as Turkey and the republic of Azerbaijan. These falsifications, which are backed by state and state backed non-governmental organizational bodies, range from elementary school all the way to the highest level of universities in these countries. Due to prevalent political situation in the world, where historical truths are sacrificed for political and financial reasons, falsification of history has even reached some authors who claim affiliation with Western academia as noted in the Part I of this book and exposed in other books such as Vyronis 1993. Another recent example was the desecration of Armenian monuments in Nakhjavan." -- Lornejad, Siavash; Doostzadeh, Ali (2012). Arakelova, Victoria; Asatrian, Garnik (eds.). On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi (PDF). Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies. p. 85 (note 277).


 * "Azeri scholars, until some two decades ago, did not deny the historic Armenian presence in Mountainous Karabagh. In fact, the works of Mirza Jamal,'Mirza Adigozal Beg, Ahmad Beg, and Bakikhanov, mentioning an Armenian presence in the region, were printed in Baku. Everything tumed upside down in 1988, following the demands of the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh to secede from Azerbaijan. Azeri politicians, journalists, and, as will be demonstrated below, even academics, in order to justify their government's anti-Armenian actions in Mountainous Karabagh, avowed that the region was never part of historic Armenia and that the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh were newcomers who had gradually arrived there only after 1828." -- Bournoutian, George (2011). The 1823 Russian Survey of the Karabagh Province. A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of Karabagh in the First Half of the 19th Century. Mazda Publishers. p. 427


 * "A more recent revisionist view claims that in the nineteenth century Russia and Iran conspired to divide Azerbaijan between themselves. Considering 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. However, this is exactly what the Azerbaijani nationalist poet Bakhtiar Vahabzadeh claims in his poem titled “Gulistan.” The poem refers to the 1813 Treaty of Golistan, according to which Iran lost part of its Transcaucasian possessions to Russia. This view is now widely accepted by Azerbaijani nationalists. The result has been that Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet national identity is not only Turko-centric but also very much anti-Iran. In many ways, it has been developed in opposition to Iran as “the other,” not only as a state but also as a culture and historical entity. Being Azerbaijani has come to mean denying any Iran connection." Eldar Mamedov (2017). The New Geopolitics of the South Caucasus: Prospects for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Resolution: Azerbaijan Twenty-Five Years after Independence: Accomplishments and Shortcomings. Lexington Books. p. 31


 * "This certainly is the case with Zia Bunyatov, who has made an incomplete and defective Russian translation of Bakikhanov's text. Not only has he not translated any of the poems in the text, but he does not even mention that he has not done so, while he does not translate certain other prose parts of the text without indicating this and why. This is in particular disturbing because he suppresses, for example, the mention of territory inhabited by Armenians, thus not only falsifying history, but also not respecting Bakikhanov's dictum that a historian should write without prejudice, whether religious, ethnic, political or otherwise. [...] Guilistam-i Iram translated with commentary by Ziya M. Bunyatov (Baku. 1991), p.11, where the translator has deleted the words 'and Armenia' from the text, which shows, as indicated in the introduction, that his translation should be used with circumspection, because this is not the only example of omissions from Bakikhanov's text." -- pp. xvi and 5. The Heavenly Rose-Garden: A History of Shirvan & Daghestan. pp. xvi, 5. Willem M. Floor and Hasan Javadi


 * "The young Azeri's seemingly innocuous, abstract archaeological paper was a deliberate political provocation: all the crosses on today's territory of Azerbaijan, including significantly Nagorno-Karabagh and Nakhichevan, were defined as Albanian, a people who in turn were seen as the direct ancestors of today's Azeris. // The rest, as they say, is history. The Armenian archaeologists were upset and threatened to walk out en bloc. Protests were filed, and even Russian scholars from Leningrad objected to this blatantly political appropriation, posing as scholarship. [...] // Thus, minimally, two points must be made. Patently false cultural origin myths are not always harmless." -- p. 154, Philip L. Kohl (1996). Nationalism, politics, and the practice of archaeology. Cambridge University Press


 * "In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the long Soviet practice of historic falsification has left a legacy which has distorted both the views of many Azerbaijanis of Iran and the true nature of their cultural, ethnic and historic connections. The following are some examples of this process of falsification, which, incidentally, in the last few years, has been picked up and given new credence by a number of Western commentators. Several myths with significant policy implications shape the Azerbaijanis' views of their country, its origins, and its relations to Iran." -- p. 106, Shireen Hunter (1998). Shireen Hunter: Iran and Transcaucasia in the Post-Soviet Era. Routledge.


 * "As noted, in order to construct an Azerbaijani national history and identity based on the territorial definition of a nation, as well as to reduce the influence of Islam and Iran, the Azeri nationalists, prompted by Moscow devised an "Azeri" alphabet, which replaced the Arabo-Persian script. In the 1930s a number of Soviet historians, including the prominent Russian Orientalist, Ilya Petrushevskii, were instructed by the Kremlin to accept the totally unsubstantiated notion that the territory of the former Iranian khanates (except Yerevan, which had become Soviet Armenia) was part of an Azerbaijani nation. Petrushevskii's two important studies dealing with the South Caucasus, therefore, use the term Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani in his works on the history of the region from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Other Russian academics went even further and claimed that an Azeri nation had existed from ancient times and had continued to the present. Since all the Russian surveys and almost all nineteenth-century Russian primary sources referred to the Muslims who resided in the South Caucasus as "Tatars" and not "Azerbaijanis", Soviet historians simply substituted Azerbaijani for Tatars. Azeri historians and writers, starting in 1937, followed suit and began to view the three-thousand-year history of the region as that of Azerbaijan. The pre-Iranian, Iranian, and Arab eras were expunged. Anyone who lived in the territory of Soviet Azerbaijan was classified as Azeri; hence the great Iranian poet Nezami, who had written only in Persian, became the national poet of Azerbaijan." -- p. xvi. Bournoutian, George (2016). The 1820 Russian Survey of the Khanate of Shirvan: A Primary Source on the Demography and Economy of an Iranian Province prior to its Annexation by Russia. Gibb Memorial Trust.


 * "In fact, after Stalin’s failure to annex Iranian Azarbayjan in 1946, Soviet historians not only proclaimed that the khanates were never part of Iran and were independent entities, but began (and have continued to do so after 1991) to refer to Iranian Azarbayjan as south Azerbaijan, which had been separated from north Azerbaijan, see V. Leviatov, Ocherki iz istorii Azerbaidzhana v XVIII veke (Baku, 1948). Such absurd notions are completely negated by Article III of the Golestan Treaty and Article I of the treaties between Russia and the khans of Qarabagh, Shakki and Shirvan; see Appendix 4." -- Bournoutian, George (2021). "Georgia and the Khanates of South Caucasus in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century" in From the Kur to the Aras: A Military History of Russia’s Move into the South Caucasus and the First Russo-Iranian War, 1801-1813. Brill. p. 249 (note 4)"


 * "In a book by Aziz Alakbarli, published by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2007 – and no less edited by Academician Budag Badagov, Prof. Vali Aliyev and Dr. Jafar Giyassi of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences – the entire territory of the current Republic of Armenia is presented as Western Azerbaijan. The Monuments of Western Azerbaijan, reprinted several times in recent years and in different languages, opens with “The map [of ] the Ancient Turkish-Oghuz land – Western Azerbaijan (present day the Republic of Armenia)” [sic!]. According to this “study”, endorsed by the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, all monuments in Armenia are of “Turkic”, “Turkish” or “Arman-Turkish” origin, including the first-century Roman Temple of Garni, “referring to ancient Gargar Turks” [sic!], and the Cathedral of the Holy See of the Armenian Apostolic Church as a 7th-century “Arman-Turkish Christian temple Uchkilsa/Echmiadzin”.19 This kind of re-writing of “history” is based solely on sources produced by Azerbaijani authors, notably prominent academician and national figure Ziya Buniyatov, whom President Heydar Aliyev described as “the constructor of our identity and self-consciousness”.20 This constructed narrative is echoed in the political discourse of President Aliyev and is woven into state policies, diplomacy, public relations, identity construction and, critically, in the construction of extreme anti-Armenianism in Azerbaijan. -- pp. 586–587, Gippert, Jost and Dum-Tragut, Jasmine. Caucasian Albania: An International Handbook, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2023.


 * "From the mid-2000s the notion of western Azerbaijan converged with revived interest in the khanates in a wide-ranging fetishisation of the Erivan (Irevan) khanate as a historically Azerbaijani entity. Covering some 7,500 square kilometres and most of present-day Armenia (if not exactly coextensive with it), the Erivan khanate has undergone the same kind of transformations as Caucasian Albania before it. Contemporary Azerbaijani historiography depicts the Erivan khanate as an ‘Azerbaijani state’, populated by autochthonous Azerbaijani Turks and sacralised as the burial ground of semi-mythological figures from the Turkic pantheon.73 ‘Azerbaijani Turk’ and ‘Muslim’ are used interchangeably in this literature, although contemporary demographic surveys differentiate the latter into Persians, Shia and Sunni Kurds and Turkic tribes.74 Emulating the nationalist scientism of Samvel Karapetyan, catalogues of lost Azerbaijani heritage depict a Turkic palimpsest beneath almost every monument and religious site in Armenia – whether Christian or Muslim." p. 117, Broers, Laurence (2019). Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry. Edinburgh University Press.


 * "The name Azarbaijan is a pre-Islamic Persian name for a pre-Islamic province south of the River Aras. “Azarbaijan” was not used in any definite or clear manner for the area north of the River Aras in the pre- modern period. In some instances, the name Azarbaijan was used in a manner that included the Aran region immediately to the north of the River Aras, but this was rather an exception. The adoption of this name for the area north of the River Aras was by the nationalist, Baku-based Mosavat government (1918–20) and was later retained by the Soviet Union." p. 16 - Behrooz, Maziar (2023). Iran at War: Interactions with the Modern World and the Struggle with Imperial Russia. I.B. Tauris


 * " In fact, in medieval times the name ‘Azerbaijan’ was applied not to the area of present independent Azerbaijan but to the lands to the south of the Araxes river, now part of Iran. The lands to the north west of the Araxes were known as Albania; the lands to the north east, the heart of present-day post-Soviet Azerbaijan, were known as Sharvan (or Shirwan) and Derbend." p. 30, Fowkes, B. (2002). Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflict in the Post-Communist World. Springer.


 * "The adoption of the name “Azerbaijan” in 1918 by the Mussavatist government for classical Caucasian Albania (Arrān and Sharvān) was due to political reasons28. For example, the giant orientalist of the early 20th century, Vasily Barthold has stated: “… whenever it is necessary to choose a name that will encompass all regions of the republic of Azerbaijan, the name Arrān can be chosen. But the term Azerbaijan was chosen because when the Azerbaijan republic was created, it was assumed that this and the Persian Azerbaijan will be one entity, because the population of both has a big similarity. On this basis, the word Azerbaijan was chosen. Of course right now when the word Azerbaijan is used, it has two meanings as Persian Azerbaijan and as a republic, it’s confusing and a question rises as to which Azerbaijan is being talked about”. In the post-Islamic sense, Arrān and Sharvān are often distinguished while in the pre-Islamic era, Arrān or the Western Caucasian Albania roughly corresponds to the modern territory of republic of Azerbaijan. In the Soviet era, in a breathtaking manipulation, historical Azerbaijan (NW Iran) was reinterpreted as “South Azerbaijan” in order for the Soviets to lay territorial claim on historical Azerbaijan proper which is located in modern Northwestern Iran". p. 10, Lornejad, Siavash; Doostzadeh, Ali (2012). Arakelova, Victoria; Asatrian, Garnik (eds.). On the modern politicization of the Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi (PDF). Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies.


 * "The case of Azerbaijan is interesting in several aspects. The geographical name “Azerbaijan” for the territory where the Republic of Azerbaijan is now situated, as well as the ethnic name for the Caucasian Turks, “Azerbaijani,” were coined in the beginning of the 10th century. The name Azerbaijan, which implies the lands located north of the Aras River, is a duplicate of the historical region of Azerbaijan (it is the arabized version of the name of a historical region of Atropatena) which is the north-western region of Iran. After the proclamation of the first Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918, the Turkish army invaded the Caucasus, and the name “Azerbaijan” was offered by a young Turkish regime to the Turkish-speaking territory" p. 253, After the Soviet Empire. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 05 Oct. 2015.


 * "The Ottoman Turks coveted Iran’s province of Azerbaijan. Therefore following the Bolshevik revolution, in 1918 installed a pro-Turkish government in Baku and named it after the Iranian province of Azerbaijan" - p. xvii, The New Geopolitics of the South Caucasus: Prospects for Regional Cooperation and Conflict Resolution (Contemporary Central Asia: Societies, Politics, and Cultures), Lexington Books, Shireen Hunter


 * "Until 1918, when the Musavat regime decided to name the newly independent state Azerbaijan, this designation had been used exclusively to identify the Iranian province of Azerbaijan." - p. 60, Dekmejian, R. Hrair; Simonian, Hovann H. (2003). Troubled Waters: The Geopolitics of the Caspian Region. I.B. Tauris.


 * "The region to the north of the river Araxes was not called Azerbaijan prior to 1918, unlike the region in northwestern Iran that has been called since so long ago." p. 356, Rezvani, Babak (2014). Ethno-territorial conflict and coexistence in the caucasus, Central Asia and Fereydan: academisch proefschrift. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press


 * "The name Azerbaijan was also adopted for Arrān, historically an Iranian region, by anti-Russian separatist forces of the area when, on 26 May 1918, they declared its independence and called it the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan. To allay Iranian concerns, the Azerbaijan government used the term “Caucasian Azerbaijan” in the documents for circulation abroad." - Multiple Authors, Encyclopaedia Iranica


 * "Originally the term Azerbaijan was the name of the Iranian historical province Adarbaigan, or Azarbaijan (from older Aturpatakan) in the north-west of the country. This term, as well as its respective derivative, Azari (or, in Turkish manner, Azeri), as “ethnonym”, was not applied to the territory north of Arax (i.e. the area of the present-day Azerbaijan Republic, former Arran and Shirvan) and its inhabitants up until the establishment of the Musavat regime in that territory (1918-1920)." - p. 85, note 1, Morozova, I. (2005). Contemporary Azerbaijani Historiography on the Problem of "Southern Azerbaijan" after World War II, Iran and the Caucasus, 9(1)


 * "Until the late 19th and early 20th century it would be unthinkable to refer to the Muslim inhabitants of the Caucasus as Azaris (Azeris) or Azerbaijanis, since the people and the geographical region that bore these names were located to the south of the Araxes River. Therefore, the Iranian intelligentsia raised eyebrows once the independent Republic of Azerbaijan was declared in 1918 just across the Iranian border. - pp. 176-177, Avetikian, Gevorg. "Pān-torkism va Irān [Pan-Turkism and Iran]", Iran and the Caucasus 14, 1 (2010), Brill


 * Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Mongolia and Azerbaijan.  WC  Quidditch   ☎   ✎  23:29, 12 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions.  WC  Quidditch   ☎   ✎  23:30, 12 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Keep and modify/rename. Since I am not the author of the article, but the translator, I asked from the original author on the other wiki. Now I see he's not allowed to edit here. If the naming is problem then we can rename it something like to "Turko-Mongolian cultural relations in Azerbaijan (area)" or "Turko-Mongoloan cultural relations in Caucasian and Iranian Azerbaijan" etc.


 * About the term "South Azerbaijan", to be honest I don't know how is it considered as irredentism, but anyway, I don't think it's a big deal. We can simply replace the term to "Iranian Azerbaijan".


 * About the concerns on a specific article in azwiki. To be honest I don't know what to do with this information. I just took a look, and it just says opinions of some authors. I didn't find the claim. Even if there's one, it's not related to our current topic.


 * Lastly, nominator didn't mention which sources are unreliable and why. And the sources are being published in a specific country doesn't make them unreliable. There's not such thing in WP:RS.


 * Conclusion: the article is huge and it has lots reliable sources (14 books, and tons of citations) including books by Mehmet Fuat Koprulu and Zeki Velidi Togan. It would be a big mistake to delete such a big article. It just needs to be renamed and modified. Peace out. Aredoros87 (talk) 12:22, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * "If the naming is problem then we can rename it something like to "Turko-Mongolian cultural relations in Azerbaijan (area)" or "Turko-Mongoloan cultural relations in Caucasian and Iranian Azerbaijan" etc.
 * As mentioned, naming is just one of the issues, and your proposals aren't an improvement. Azerbaijan was not a nation at this time (and not used as a name in the Caucasus), and Azerbaijanis were not an ethnonym, this is unanimous in scholarship.
 * "Lastly, nominator didn't mention which sources are unreliable and why. And the sources are being published in a specific country doesn't make them unreliable. There's not such thing in WP:RS."
 * But I literally did, and with tons of proof a that. Wikipedia is not a place to sponsor historical revisionism/negationism.
 * "I asked from the original author on the other wiki. Now I see he's not allowed to edit here."
 * Even more concerning that the original author is indeffed here. HistoryofIran (talk) 13:49, 13 December 2023 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Even though consensus to keep seems apparent at a glance, comment posters have expressed sufficient diversity in opinions regarding the nature of the keep that further discussion seems useful. Thanks, Doczilla  Ohhhhhh, no! 05:34, 20 December 2023 (UTC) Relisting comment: As above. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Seraphimblade Talk to me 02:09, 22 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep -- I agree with nearly all of the points raised in the nom, but not with the conclusion. WP:DINC applies, as there is a clear body of scholarly work, much of it cited in the article and more in gScholar. The problem is that the article is a hot mess, from the title on down. Replace the admittedly ludicrous 'Azerbaijani' focus with the actual RS scholarship (Turkic peoples), and I believe there is a good article underneath. I think it needs to be renamed, stripped down, and substantially rewritten, but all three of those things can only happen if we keep the article. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 14:19, 13 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input. Would it not be better for this article to get drafted then? We're basically talking a whole different article here. HistoryofIran (talk) 14:49, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I could support Draftify as an AtD, but what would be wrong with fixing these problems on the Talk and having more editors swarm the problem? The power of crowdsourcing article improvement is one of the reasons for WP:DINC and the extremely aggressive WP:BEFORE requirements, and it is a central question in the WP:ZEAL essay. Cheers, Last1in (talk) 16:29, 14 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Keep: per . This isn't so bad that it can't be cleaned up through collaborating on the talk page. Regarding renaming, I think that can be done boldly and then via RM if someone challenges the move. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:49, 19 December 2023 (UTC)
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 *  Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Keep Article has a lot of text and notable sources. बिनोद थारू (talk) 05:24, 22 December 2023 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.