Iran's Azeris worry ethnic strife, sucking Turkey and Azerbaijan into the battle

[ad_1] Over the previous few months, Ehsan Hosseinzadeh, like many Iranians within the diaspora, had come to consider a international navy intervention was obligatory to assist his folks oust an Islamic regime that was oppressing and massacring harmless civilians. However every week after Israel and the US launched a battle in his residence nation, the 38-year-old refugee in France is frightened concerning the battle dragging in regional powers – to the detriment of Iran and its residents.

Hosseinzadeh has each cause to worry a conflagration erupting alongside ethnic, spiritual and civilizational fault traces that might rip open the injuries of historical past in an historical land.

Born in Urmia – a metropolis within the northwestern extremity of Iran that shares borders with Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iraq – Hosseinzadeh understands a factor or two concerning the explosive mixture of id and grievance.

An ethnic Azeri (additionally known as Azerbaijani and Azerbaijani-Turkish in Iran) Hosseinzadeh belongs to the biggest minority group, constituting round 24% of Iran’s 93 million inhabitants. His birthplace can also be residence to a major Kurdish inhabitants, in addition to Armenians and different minorities which have lived in lands the place the borders of empires and republics have shifted with the instances. The tangle of historical past can generally make the area a diplomatic tripwire for political leaders.

So, on Thursday, when Azerbaijan accused Iran of a drone assault on its territory that injured 4 civilians and vowed to retaliate, Hosseinzadeh was on excessive alert. The drone hit an airport constructing in Nakhchivan, a landlocked exclave of Azerbaijan bordering Iran, Turkey and Armenia. It was an ominous growth.

Learn extra Azerbaijan's Aliyev vows retaliation after 'terrorist' drone strike blamed on Iran

“You possibly can see the stress is growing. And there’s additionally the ethnicity issue. I’m unsure, however I can predict that if an ethnic battle arises in that area between Turkish folks and Kurdish folks, each Baku and Ankara will generally tend to intervene, to play their playing cards there,” he mentioned, referring to the Azeris, a Turkic folks, as “Turkish folks” in a telling signal of the complicated linguistic-identity combine within the area.

Turkey – which shares an almost 500-kilometre border with Iran that was drawn in 1639, making it the oldest constantly managed frontier within the Center East – is at excessive threat in a regional conflagration. A shared border, an ethnic group straddling a frontier, infrastructure and enterprise pursuits on both facet – all may see Turkey dealing with refugee and financial crises.

On Wednesday, a ballistic missile launched from Iran and heading in the direction of Turkish airspace was destroyed by NATO air defence programs. Turkey, NATO’s solely Muslim-majority member, is residence to the Incirlik base, which is believed to have US nuclear weapons. The following day, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a televised speech, warned that the Iran battle had taken tensions within the area to a "terrifying stage".

‘Ankara's nightmare situation’ Turkey and Iran have an extended historical past of rivalry, competitors and have at instances supported opposing proxies, particularly in Syria and Iraq. However bilateral relations between Ankara and Tehran have held agency, based mostly on mutual financial pursuits and home imperatives to comprise the Kurds. Like Turkey, Iran additionally has an oppressed Kurdish minority comprising round 10 to 17% of the inhabitants dwelling in areas additionally inhabited by Azeris.

However after Operation Epic Fury uncovered the Trump administration’s epic failure to calculate the fallout of the battle, Washington made a high-profile outreach to Iranian Kurdish armed teams based mostly within the Iraqi semi-autonomous zone. The Kurds, who've an extended expertise of being “frolicked to dry” by Washington, have thus far not bitten the US bait. However they're conscious that President Donald Trump has offered them a once-in-a-lifetime alternative of their historic resistance to regimes in Tehran.

Learn extra US reaches out to Iran’s Kurds, however will they be ‘frolicked to dry’?

If that chance is seized, it may draw Turkey into the Iran battle, specialists warn. “Turkey is in a bind,” defined Guney Yildiz, senior adviser on geopolitics and strategic insights on the Anthesis-Wallbrook Group. “It simply resolved its personal 40-year Kurdish battle,” he defined, referring to the choice final yr by the Kurdistan Employees’ Occasion (PKK) to disband, disarm and interact in a peace course of. “And now a CIA-backed Kurdish rebellion is rising on its japanese border involving the PJAK [Kurdistan Free Life Party], which is linked to the PKK community. That is Ankara's nightmare situation.”

Within the weeks earlier than the launch of the Iran battle, as Trump’s US navy “armada” was deploying to the area, Turkey engaged in a frantic diplomatic effort to avert a battle. Overseas Minister Hakan Fidan reached out to the US, Iran, Oman and different Gulf nations, in addition to Turkey’s different Western allies, in a bid to elucidate the high-stakes fallout of a battle for Ankara. The hassle failed.

The US making an outreach to the Kurds, Ankara has been placed on alert, defined Shukriya Bradost, a Center East safety skilled and doctoral researcher at Virginia Tech's College of Public and Worldwide Affairs. “Erdogan goes to be watching this intently. He clearly doesn't desire a Kurdistan in Iran,” much like the Kurdish semi-autonomous zone in Iraq, Bradost defined. “He may clearly attain out to the [Iranian] Azeris and he is very near Baku as nicely,” she added.

Transit corridors, pipelines, competitors and cooperation Turkey and Azerbaijan share shut ties rooted in widespread linguistic and cultural foundations which have deepened with financial and navy cooperation.

Through the 2020 Azerbaijan-Armenia battle over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, Turkish drones and navy advisers had been vital in handing Baku a victory. Iran, a rustic that has cordial relations and an open border with Armenia, has historically used its relations with Yerevan to comprise Azerbaijani-Turkish ambitions within the South Caucasus area. However with Armenia defeat, Tehran emerged from the battle diplomatically weakened.

In the meantime, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been patching up ties after the 2020 battle. A latest settlement between the 2 nations for a transit hall linking Azerbaijan to the Nakhchivan exclave – known as the “Trump Route for Worldwide Peace and Prosperity” – has additional sidelined Iran within the area.

The financial stakes in Iran’s northwestern area are additionally excessive for Turkey, which receives greater than 15% of its pure fuel from Iran by the Tabriz-Ankara pipeline.

However the US-Israeli battle on Iran threatens to rattle the intricate net of pursuits and important financial corridors that preserve stability within the South Caucasus area.

If Azerbaijan, emboldened by its ally Turkey, makes an attempt to mobilise Iranian Azeris, it may contact a very delicate ethnic fault line in northwestern Iran, specialists warn. “The danger is that Iran's western provinces develop into a proxy house the place Turkey backs Azeris and the US backs Kurds, which fragments the Iranian opposition additional at precisely the second it wants cohesion,” mentioned Yildiz.

Hopes fading – however not fully Iran’s West Azerbaijan province – of which Urmia is the capital – has lengthy been residence to a blended inhabitants of primarily Shiite Azeris and Sunni Kurds.

The Azeris, the Turkic group that produced the Safavid and Qajar dynasties earlier than the Pahlavi dynasty got here to energy, had been an influential group that was built-in with Iran’s majority Persians. Their fortunes dipped with the Pahlavis, a regime reviled by ethnic minorities as Persian supremacists.

With the 1979 revolution and takeover of the Islamic regime, the Azeris had been again within the nationwide mainstream. Beneath the Shiite Islamic regime in Tehran, the Azeris are a extremely built-in ethnic group in Iranian society. The late supreme chief, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was Azeri, and the group is thought to be the Shiite brethren of Iran’s majority ethnic Persians, who make up greater than 50% of the inhabitants. “They've worldwide help from neighbouring Turkey and Azerbaijan, and inside Iran, they’re highly effective too, as a result of they have been a part of the system – the political, financial and safety buildings,” defined Bradost.

The Kurds, compared, have fared poorly underneath the Shiite authorities. However they're probably the most mobilized ethnic group in Iran, with many Kurdish events having armed teams based mostly in neighbouring Iraq.

A collapse of central authority may ignite an ethnic tinderbox between the 2 communities who've historic territorial disputes.

For Hosseinzadeh, who has household within the area, it’s a nightmare situation. “I am very frightened a couple of very massive ethnic battle there, as a result of there's, as I perceive it, little or no dialogue between the 2 ethnic teams. And there are very excessive folks on each side. Within the Kurdish camp, there are individuals who say the entire Azerbaijan [region of Iran] is our territory and that is a part of Kurdistan. And there are additionally folks in Azerbaijani [or Iranian Azeri] camp saying that we've to hitch Azerbaijan or Turkey,” defined Hosseinzadeh.

For practically half-a-century, the Islamic regime in Tehran maintained that it was the one guarantor of stability within the nation. Hosseinzadeh, an Iranian lawyer and fervent defender of democratic rights, is at pains to notice that he's not echoing Islamic regime propaganda. “The regime warns folks of chaos. They are saying if the regime falls, we'll fall. I am not repeating that perspective,” he pressured. “The Islamist regime has to go. We’ve had 47 years of it, that’s sufficient. However there are very massive and critical issues in Iran and we've to watch out of these rising conflicts.”

After years of championing human rights and hoping for international assist to make his imaginative and prescient for Iran come true, Hosseinzadeh at the moment sounds anxious after sleepless days making an attempt to achieve his family members again residence and following the information. “My want was, and is...however it's getting a bit pale,” he trails with fear and exhaustion earlier than beginning once more. “My want was bringing democracy, a federal democratic authorities based mostly on human rights for all of the folks of Iran – not for the supremacy of the Persian folks, for all ethnicities,” he emphasises. “And now we’re getting removed from that, with the hazard with bombardment, ethnic battle, international actors…it is pity and it is worrying. However let's have a look at what's going to occur sooner or later.”