Mohammad Khiabani

Tabriz, Iran—Iranian politicians are always quick to praise Tabriz’s revolutionary credentials. During a November 2009 visit to the city, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recalled, “the people [of Tabriz and Iranian Azerbaijan] are pioneers of the pro-constitution movement, repelling the aggressors and acts of mischief and defending the supreme ideals of the Islamic Revolution.” The uprising of 29th of Bahman (February 19, 1978) in the city was a key continuation of the forty-day cycles of protest that spurred the Iranian Revolution forward. Further back, Tabriz, due to its closeness to Turkish and Russian intellectual circles, was a vanguard of intellectual agitation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From the 1891 Tobacco Protest and the 1906 Constitutional Revolution to the 1946 Autonomous Azerbaijan’s People’s Government, Tabrizis have a long lineage of rebelliousness. How does this history resonate in the current, still-simmering political crisis centered in Tehran?

Unlike many of Iran’s ethnic minorities, Iranian Turks have two things that are important in politics: numbers and money. It is estimated that between a quarter to a third of Iranian’s 73 million citizens are of Azeri decent. Iranian Azerbaijan historically has been a center of trade and commerce in the region, ensuring that a large cohort of merchants and industrialists throughout Iran’s history were Turkish. This wealth translated into intellectual and political influence, and as Turks migrated to all corners of Iran’s territory, from Abadan to Mashad, they did not end up on the bottom rungs of the social ladder. Nor do Iranian Turks sit solely on one side of the regime’s politics. While most outside of Iran are unaware, former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi and current Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei are both Turks (although Khamenei was born in Mashhad).

Tabriz also featured some of the largest Green Movement protests outside of Tehran during the post-June election crisis. According to the official (and disputed) results, Ahmadinejad won the city with 57 percent of the vote. While Tabriz is no Tehran, the results surprised many, given that many of its residents are similar in disposition to the capital’s large middle class. Today, however, with the “new chill” in Green activities after the Revolution Day rallies on February 11—both because of increased repression as well as the internal debate on tactics and strategy within the opposition—it appears that the city’s life has returned to normalcy, even if temporarily. The huge bazaar is teeming with pre-Eid shopping, as Tabrizis get ready for the celebrations of the Persian New Year. Hawkers are selling fireworks in the city center, and the night is filled with pops and explosions of a decidedly nonpolitical nature.

One business owner near the bazaar recounted, “Lots of the young people here liked Mousavi. They of course don’t remember him from his days as Prime Minister. But they saw him as a way to get more social freedoms.” He estimated that 70 percent of the Tabriz youth probably identified with Mousavi after the election, though far less of them took part in any demonstrations. This number—as good as any in the absence of reliable polls, studies, or even foreign journalists who travel to Tabriz—should not be taken as permanent support. Young people recently interviewed in the city—a soldier conscript, a taxi driver, and a clothing store clerk—all professed little interest in the recent political drama.

Instead, a different sort of shift seems to be pulling Tabriz today. After relations between the governments of Turkey and Iran improved, the requirement for visas for travel between the two countries was waived. Tabrizis used to travel to the landlocked province of Nakhchivan (belonging to the government of Azerbaijan but mostly separated by Armenia) for their “taste of luxury.” But because of requests by the Iranian government, Azerbaijan removed the bars, brothels, and discos that catered to Iranians in the region. Now, with the waiving of visas, and the absence of language barriers, Iranian Turks travel with ease to Istanbul and other Turkish vacation spots, taking advantage (for now) of the overvalued Iranian rial.

This is a two-way street, though. Tabriz and its outer environs are filling with cross-border Turkish investment. Boutiques in the wealthiest neighborhood of Tabriz feature signs in both Persian and in Turkish. Joint ventures between Turkish and Iranian owners (foreign ownership is limited to 49 percent of any firm) are in the daily business news, producing products both for the domestic and Turkish markets. Turkish businessmen donning sharp suits and Italian ties fill the city’s hotels. Though the economic pressures on Tabriz are similar to other places in Iran, the regional economic integration that is taking place may ameliorate them compared to more isolated Iranian provinces.

Politics never can be reduced to simple ethnic ties. “Iranian-ness” has proved to be a powerful salve in past times, and the Green Movement was no doubt one of these historical examples of deep Iranian nationalism. Yet one cannot forget that individuals always are members of multiple communities, and that they respond to the opportunities—political and economic—which are presented to them.