Turkic-speaking groups

The second major element of the Iranian population is composed of various Turkic-speaking groups. The Turkic languages belong to the Ural-Altaic family, which includes many languages of Central Asia and western China, as well as Turkish, Hungarian, and Finnish. The various Turkic languages spoken in Iran tend to be mutually intelligible. Of these, only Azarbaijani is written to any extent. In Iran it is written in the Arabic script, in contrast to the Azarbaijani in Turkey, which is written in the Roman script, and that of the Soviet Union (and subsequently the independant nation of Azerbaijan), which is written in a modified Cyrillic script. Unlike Indo-European languages, Turkic languages are characterized by short base words to which are added numerous prefixes and suffixes, each addition changing the meaning of the base. They are also distinguished by their vowel harmony, which means that the kind of vowel used in the base word and the additives must agree. Thus, lengthy words might be filled with "o's" and "u's" or with "a's" and "e's," but not with mixtures of the two.

Turkic speakers made up as much as 25 percent of Iran's total population in 1986. By 2008 they made up a little less than 20 percent. They are concentrated in northwestern Iran, where they form the overwhelming majority of the population of East Azarbaijan and a majority of West Azarbaijan. They also constitute a significant minority in the provinces of Fars, Gilan, Hamadan, Khorasan, Mazandaran, and Tehran. Except for the Azarbaijanis, most of the Turkic groups are tribally organized. Some of the Turkic tribes continued to follow a nomadic or seminomadic life despite repeated attempts by Persian dominated Iranian authorities to settle them. Educated Turkic speakers in the large cities speak and understand Persian.

Many other Turkic-speaking groups are scattered throughout Iran, but mainly along the northern tier of provinces. In the northeastern part of East Azarbaijan lived some fifty tribes collectively called the Ilsavan (formerly known as Shahsavan). The Ilsavan, who might have numbered as many as 100,000 at one point, are pastoral and traditoinally take their flocks to summer pastures on the high slopes of Mount Sabalan and to winter pastures in the Dasht-e Moghan, adjacent to the Aras River, which formed the frontier between Iran and the Soviet Union (now the independant state of Azerbaijan). The Ilsavan first appeared in Iranian history as staunch supporters of the Safavid dynasty, which originated during the fifteenth century in Ardabil, a town located in a valley on the south side of Mount Sabalan.

The Qajars, from whom came the royal family that Reza Shah dethroned, form a Turkic-speaking enclave among the Mazandarani. Some were settled agriculturists while others were pastoral nomads. In the northeastern part of Mazandaran, in a region known as the Turkoman Sahra, live several tribes of Turkomans, some of which are sections of larger tribes living across the border in the Soviet Union (now in Armenia and Azerbaijan). In 1986 the number of Turkomans in Iran was estimated to be about 250,000. Several small, nomadic, Turkic-speaking groups, including Qarapakhs and Uzbeks, live in Khorasan. Small numbers of Qarapakhs also live in northwestern Iran along the southern shore of Lake Urmia.

The Afshars are one of the most scattered of the Turkic-speaking groups. A seminomadic people who speak a dialect akin to Azerbaijani, they are found along the shore of Lake Urmia, around Zanjan, along the borders of Kurdistan, south of Kerman, and in Khorasan. These separated groups were estimated to total 100,000, but they did not share any consciousness of a common identity nor did they have any political unity. Nevertheless, they all referred to themselves as Afshars and differentiated themselves from other groups, both Turk and non-Turk, that surround them.