Azerbaijani national identity
The people who lived in the present-day country of Azerbaijan identified as either Muslims of the ummah (community), or Turks, who shared a language family spread out throughout a considerable portion of Central Asia, or as Persians.
The region never formed a distinct, unified state before the Russians finished conquering it in 1828, and even when Iran ruled the area, the eastern part of the South Caucasus was composed of numerous feudal khanates.
[10] Both historical Azerbaijan to the south of the Aras River and the Russian-ruled Baku and Elizavetpol governorates to the north were home to a majority of Turkic-speaking people, who were defined differently by opposing ideologies.
The Tiflis-based publicist, writer, and philosopher Mirza Fatali Akhundov (who is regarded as a nation-builder by both Azerbaijanis and Iranians), considered Iran to be his fatherland while simultaneously classifying his kinsmen as Turki.
The Turkic population of the Ottoman Empire and in present-day Azerbaijan were both identified by Ali bey Huseynzade in his magazine Füyuzat (1906) as descended from the Oghuz Turks, and he asserted that the differences between the two peoples were of minimal significance.
However, the writers in Azärijilar and other thinkers like Jalal Mammad Quluzadä claimed that the Azerbaijani identity had to develop independently of the Ottomans in order to thrive after its recent "recovery" from Iranian dominance.
The local populace was frequently included under terms such as Türk milleti and Qafqaziya müsalman Xalqi ("the Muslim people of the Caucasus").
[14] Iran was in the midst of deterioration and revolution when the formation of the Azerbaijani national identity was taking place, and therefore it did not provide an ideal role model or source of inspiration.
[16] On May 28, 1918, Mahammad Amin Rasulzade and a group of Azerbaijani nationalist elites proclaimed the formation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (abbreviated as ADR), thus ending a century of Russian colonial rule.
Due to the fact that the majority of people continued to identify themselves by religion, Azerbaijani officials also regularly used "Muslim" to refer to the same group.
[13] The phrase "Caucasian Azerbaijan" was thus used in the documents intended for international distribution by the Azerbaijani government to ease Iranian concerns.
[21] Due to the fact that rural Turkic-speaking communities in the Caucasus typically associated themselves more with specific locations and local clans than with the entire Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, the new ethnonym "Azerbaijani" took a while to gain consensus and wide adoption.
[22] Several myths about Azerbaijan's history and its links with Iran were created between the time the ADR was conquered by the Bolsheviks in 1920 and the period that its heritage reappeared as encouragement for the country's new nationalists in the 1980s.
Commenting on this, Mamedov states that "Considering that Iran fought two devastating wars with Russia (1803–1813 and 1824–1828), the idea of a Russo-Iranian conspiracy against Azerbaijan is totally absurd."
[25] The political party known as the Popular Front of Azerbaijan (abbreviated as APF) accelerated the development of a Turkocentric and anti-Iranian national identity.
[25] Gorbachev supported the establishment of pro-reform movements in the former Soviet Union's constituent nations during the early years of his reforms.
Zardusht Alizadeh, one of the movement's early founders, states in his memoirs, The End of the Second Republic, that a more strongly nationalistic element immediately undermined the APF's original pro-democracy and human rights-based program.
[27] The ultranationalist and pan-Turkist faction won after an internal power struggle, leading to the APF adopting a firmly pro-Turkish nationalist stance.
Abulfaz Elchibey, a former dissident from the Soviet Union, was elected as the chairman of the APF and surrounded himself with pan-Turkists who shared his views.
[28] Another event that strengthened the APF and nationalist tendencies was a series of military setbacks in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which included the ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis from the area; and the capture of Shusha in 1992.
[27] The pan-Turkist zeal supported by the APF was slightly reduced after Heydar Aliyev returned to power in June 1993 and Elchibey resigned as president.
