Introduction
The national identity conception in Azerbaijan is a relatively recent idea, which is characterized by significant ambiguity that emerged on the background of ideological and political processes. The people of Azerbaijan commonly thought of themselves within two paradigms that predetermined their national identity. Firstly, they called themselves Muslims; secondly, they referred to their identity as Turks. In this essay, the particularities and the reasons for the national identity complexity of the Azerbaijanis will be explored on the basis of the analysis of two main narratives imposed by history and the USSR ideology.
National Identity in Azerbaijan
When discussing Azerbaijan’s people’s national identity, one should refer to the two conceptions, namely Azerbaijanis and Turks. Azerbaijanis are the population that inhabits the territories of Azerbaijan and share the national culture and ethnic particularities of this country. Turks, on the other hand, are the population that inhabits the same territories as spans further to other countries where people speak the Turkish language (Yilmaz, 2013). Essentially, the people inhabiting Azerbaijan were referred to as Turks since they spoke the language and shared the collective memory of this ethnicity (Yilmaz, 2013). Thus, while both terms relate to the people inhabiting Azerbaijan, Turks are different from Azerbaijanis because the term implies a wider range of Turkic nationalities beyond the territory of Azerbaijan.
The two main narratives around the national identity of the people of Azerbaijan are derived from the opposition between the approaches ideologists used to refer to when establishing the population’s roots. On the one hand, the national identity was connected to the territorial characteristics, which were justified by the state named Azerbaijan, hence the people were to be Azerbaijanis (Yilmaz, 2013). On the other hand, the ethnic roots were emphasized, which tied the people of Azerbaijan to their Turkic ancestry (Garagozov, 2012). The first narrative prevailed in the Soviet Union, while the second one was up-to-date during the period of gaining and retaining independence.
Azerbaijan’s national identity has been a complex issue due to the historiographic uncertainties implied in the Soviet ethnic ideology. According to Garagozov (2008), “the collective memory of the Azéris and Georgians does not have a pattern similar to that of the Armenian” (p. 66). In other words, the lack of the collective ethnic memory made allowed for altering the perception of the population’s ethnic and national identities. It was particularly important for the Soviet Union’s politics of divorcing Azerbaijan from its ties with Iran and “Soviet repression of Muslim peoples” (Yilmaz, 2013, p. 512). Thus, the Soviet agenda was motivated by establishing a definite exclusion of the people of Azerbaijan from its historical, ethnic, and cultural heritage.
On the contrary, the ethnic narrative that prioritized labeling the people inhabiting Azerbaijan as Turks indicated the indigenous character of the people. However, since Turkic ancestry was associated with Iran, it was not celebrated by the Soviet politics causing ethnographers’ confusing rewriting of history to justify Azerbaijanis’ national identity as both indigenous and deprived of external ties (Tokluoglu, 2005). However, the Turkic became prevalent after the collapse of the USSR. The intensification of Azerbaijan’s nationalism was associated with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict due to the necessity of distinguishing between Armenians and Azerbaijanis (Cornell, 2015). Such complexity in defining national identity and rewriting history worsened the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan (Laycock, 2020). The two nations started to reference the historical past to claim that their ancestors were on the lands of the Nagorno-Karabakh region first, each state insisting on the inherent relation of Caucasian Albanians as the natives in the region (Dudwick, 1990). Moreover, after gaining independence, there were tensions inside the state on whether to be defined as Turks or Azerbaijanis (Cornell, 2015). Thus, the two narratives remain in opposition and hinder the national identification of Azerbaijan’s people.
Conclusion
In summation, the problem of defining the national identity of the inherent people of Azerbaijan is rooted in the Soviet era. During the politics of ethnic polishing and history rewriting, the people’s ethnic and cultural roots of Muslims and Turks were destroyed. In order to eliminate the ties of the people to their ancestry in the non-Soviet world, the people were referred to as Azerbaijanis. In such a manner, their territorial identity was emphasized instead of celebrating the historical and cultural dependence on Iran and other Turkic nations. Such an artificial creation of national ideology caused significant difficulties in re-establishing Azerbaijanis’ cultural roots after gaining independence.
References
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