Профессор Ричард Фрай (Frye) утверждает: «Тюркоязычные жители Азербайджана происходят, по большей части, от ираноязычных туземцев, несколько фракций которых до сих пор уцелели в данном регионе.» (Frye, Richard Nelson, «Peoples of Iran», in Encyclopedia Iranica).
^Свентоховский, Тадеуш. «AZERBAIJAN, REPUBLIC OF»,., Vol. 3, Colliers Encyclopedia CD-ROM, 02-28-1996: «The original Persian population became fused with the Turks, and gradually the Persian language was supplanted by a Turkic dialect that evolved into the distinct Azerbaijani language.
^ Xavier Planhol, „Lands of Iran“ in Encyclopedia Iranica. Excerpt: The toponyms, with more than half of the place names of Iranian origin in some areas, such as the Sahand, a huge volcanic massif south of Tabriz, or the Qara Dagh, near the border (Planhol, 1966, p. 305; Bazin, 1982, p. 28) bears witness to this continuity. The language itself provides eloquent proof. Azeri, not unlike Uzbek (see above), lost the vocal harmony typical of Turkish languages. It is a Turkish language learned and spoken by Iranian peasants.»(Encyclopedia Iranica, «Lands of Iran»)
AHMAD ASHRAF, «IRANIAN IDENTITY IN THE 19TH AND 20TH CENTURIES», Encyclopedia Iranica. Excerpt: "Afšār, a political scientist, pioneered systematic scholarly treatment of various aspects of Iranian national identity, territorial integrity, and national unity. An influential nationalist, he also displayed a strong belief in the nationalist character of Iranian people throughout the country’s long history. He was the first to propose the idea of Pan-Iranism to safeguard the unity and territorial integrity of the nation against the onslaught of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Arabism (Afšār, p. 187)
Существовал политический проект «Туран Йолу» (Дорога в Туран). Проект курировали Энвер-паша, Талаат-паша, Назым-бей и Ахмед Агаев (Ага-оглу). См.: Гасанова Э. Ю., «Идеология буржуазного национализма в Турции» // Баку, изд. АН АзССР, 1966 г.; Козубский К. Э., «Под копытом» // Общеказачья газета «Станица», Москва, № 2(26), декабрь 1998 г.
Touraj Atabaki, «Recasting Oneself, Rejecting the Other: Pan-Turkism and Iranian Nationalism» in Van Schendel, Willem(Editor). Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labour in the Twentieth Century. London, GBR: I. B. Tauris & Company, Limited, 2001. Actual Quote:
As far as Iran is concerned, it is widely argued that Iranian nationalism was born as a state ideology in the Reza Shah era, based on philological nationalism and as a result of his innovative success in creating a modern nation-state in Iran. However, what is often neglected is that Iranian nationalism has its roots in the political upheavals of the nineteenth century and the disintegration immediately following the Constitutional revolution of 1905-09. It was during this period that Iranism gradually took shape as a defensive discourse for constructing a bounded territorial entity — the ‘pure Iran’ standing against all others. Consequently, over time there emerged among the country’s intelligentsia a political xenophobia which contributed to the formation of Iranian defensive nationalism. It is noteworthy that, contrary to what one might expect, many of the leading agents of the construction of an Iranian bounded territorial entity came from non Persian-speaking ethnic minorities, and the foremost were the Azerbaijanis, rather than the nation’s titular ethnic group, the Persians.
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In the middle of April 1918, the Ottoman army invaded Azerbaijan for the second time.
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Contrary to their expectations, however, the Ottomans did not achieve impressive success in Azerbaijan. Although the province remained under quasi-occupation by Ottoman troops for months, attempting to win endorsement for pan-Turkism ended in failure.
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The most important political development affecting the Middle East at the beginning of the twentieth century was the collapse of the Ottoman and the Russian empires. The idea of a greater homeland for all Turks was propagated by pan-Turkism, which was adopted almost at once as a main ideological pillar by the Committee of Union and Progress and somewhat later by other political caucuses in what remained of the Ottoman Empire. On the eve of World War I, pan-Turkist propaganda focused chiefly on the Turkic-speaking peoples of the southern Caucasus, in Iranian Azerbaijan and Turkistan in Central Asia, with the ultimate purpose of persuading them all to secede from the larger political entities to which they belonged and to join the new pan-Turkic homeland. Interestingly, it was this latter appeal to Iranian Azerbaijanis which, contrary to pan-Turkist intentions, caused a small group of Azerbaijani intellectuals to become the most vociferous advocates of Iran’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. If in Europe ‘romantic nationalism responded to the damage likely to be caused by modernism by providing a new and larger sense of belonging, an all-encompassing totality, which brought about new social ties, identity and meaning, and a new sense of history from one’s origin on to an illustrious future’,(42) in Iran after the Constitutional movement romantic nationalism was adopted by the Azerbaijani Democrats as a reaction to the irredentist policies threatening the country’s territorial integrity. In their view, assuring territorial integrity was a necessary first step on the road to establishing the rule of law in society and a competent modern state which would safeguard collective as well as individual rights. It was within this context that their political loyalty outweighed their other ethnic or regional affinities. The failure of the Democrats in the arena of Iranian politics after the Constitutional movement and the start of modern state-building paved the way for the emergence of the titular ethnic group’s cultural nationalism. Whereas the adoption of integrationist policies preserved Iran’s geographic integrity and provided the majority of Iranians with a secure and firm national identity, the blatant ignoring of other demands of the Constitutional movement, such as the call for formation of society based on law and order, left the country still searching for a political identity.
Binder, Leonard; University of California Los Angeles (1999). Ethnic conflict and international politics in the Middle East. University Press of Florida. p. 22
