Shahin Khyavi: Ethnic Turks live in Iranian Azerbaijan’s provinces and other parts of the country. They are exposed to different intensities of violence.

In this intervention I will talk about various forms of violence directed against Turks in Iran.

The totalitarian nature of Iranian Governmen

t and formation of an ideological identity in the society results in manifestation of violence in various ways.

The violence applies to many fields of everyday life. Implicit and explicit violence is a real part of life, and the majority of people have been living with fear of state violence. People have fear and worry about violence exposure on their ordinary work and even in their political preference.

Those who belong to a different ethnic or religious identity are subjected to a doubled violence.

Ethnic Turks live in Iranian Azerbaijan’s provinces and other parts of the country. They are exposed to different intensities of violence.

State violence against the Turks may appear in three different aspects.

Political
Economic
Cultural and social
Examples of political violence:

Denying the Turkish identity in Iranian-Azerbaijan and imposing officially designed so-called Azeri identity, Assimilation policies and changing the composition of the Turkish population of Azerbaijan, not allowing them to select Turkish names for their babies, labeling and charging the Turkish civil rights activists with espionage, separatism as well as vaguely worded offences such as “promoting pan-Turkism”, torturing the political prisoners and threatening their families.

Examples of Economic violence:

Complicating of conditions for foreign and local investments, imposing financial hardship, discriminatory practices against Turks and other ethnic minorities when providing assistance to victims of natural disasters, failing to save environment and particularly in the case of drying of Lake Urumia, education and job discrimination against political prisoners and their families.

Examples of Cultural and social violence:

Insulting the Turkish identity in public media such as state-owned TV and journals, barriers on publishing journal and newspaper in Turkish language, Turkish nations are degrading by the official media, and denigrating in the schoolbooks,

Other types of violence can be summarized as follows:

Violence against women, violence against children, violence against working children and to be exposed to violence by their employers , physical violence in the query process to political prisoners , and promoting child-marriage.
Shahin Khyavi
25/11/2014


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