The Role of Turks in the Iranian Modernization Process (19th-20th century) – part IV
The second and third part is available here: The Role of Turks in the Iranian Modernization Process (19th-20th century) – part II-III
The Role of Turks in the Iranian Modernization Process (19th-20th century) – part IV
Thus, although the Persian state faced similar problems and challenges in its relations with the Western world as the Ottoman Empire, the options available to the central power differed considerably. The reform measures introduced by the ruler Reza shah (1925–1941), also known as ’Maxim Reza Khan’ who had risen from military commander to shah from a Cossack military background[1] and was intended to strengthen the country's Persian identity, provoked a different reaction from those of his contemporary, Atatürk, who had adopted measures in a similar spirit.
To mention just the most important, Reza Shah had restored the turbe of the great Persian poet Firdausi in 1924, Persianised the names of the months (1925), introduced a new penal code modelled on the Italian model (1926), banned the wearing of the turban (1928), and established or strengthened a number of institutions to promote the Farsi language in the country, such as Ferhengistan (1935) and the Persian Language and Literature Society (1934). Indeed, he banned the official use of any language other than Persian in the country.[2]
This policy is worth comparing with the government-sponsored "Vatandaş Türkçe konuş!" („Speak Turkish, citizen!”) campaign in the Republic of Turkey in 1928, which was on the agenda for more than a decade. The essence and aim of the campaign was to reduce the presence of minority and/or foreign languages within the borders and to give Turkish a more prominent place in geographical areas where the population primarily used other languages (Arabic, French, Kurdish, Ladino, etc.). In 1935, the country officially changed its name to Iran, and in 1936, two years after the Turkish legislation, the shah introduced the obligation of usage of family names in the country.
In 1928, also a few years after the Turkish regulation, it annulled capitulations in favour of foreign companies in order to increase economic space.[3] All this, of course, required strong central power, which made the development of the army and strategic areas inevitable.
Reza Shah, in line with contemporary Turkish army-building methods, which also aimed to raise the civilisation level of the male population, increased the size of the army from 40,000 soldiers in 1925 to 127,000 in 1941. He replaced the semi-autonomous civil service, which had previously been flexibly attached to the state apparatus, with regular civil servants on a monthly salary, who numbered some 90,000 by the early 1940s.[4]
Reza Shah met Mustafa Kemal in person once, in the summer of 1934, when he spent a long journey in Turkey from Kars, through Trabzon, Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir on a long 27-day visit. The visit created a considerable backlash in the Turkish press of the time and was also an excellent opportunity to promote the success of the new Turkish state-building model.[5]
Since the new world political order after the Second World War, and the role of Ankara and Tehran within it, would be the subject of another essay, we have focused here on the comparison between the modernisation of the Republic of Turkey and that of Persia and Iran.
In sum, although the two most important states in the geographical area in question faced similar dilemmas during the 19th century, the proponents of Iranian modernisation drew to a not inconsiderable extent on the Ottoman experience, alongside Russian and British influences. An examination of Iranian modernisation also shows that the reference to the so-called Turkish model did not necessarily begin to spread in the region after 1923, when the Republic of Turkey was proclameted, but that there were already signs of it during the Young Turk movement and the constitutional period.
Furthermore, although Iran had direct British, Russian, French and Central European connections, the Khajars and Pahlavi's system of relations with the European powers usually served as a good point of reference for the Porte and the Turks. Nothing shows this better than the fact that the Persian state devoted considerable resources to obtaining meaningful information on the policies of its western neighbour through as many channels as possible - diplomatic, commercial, cultural. This phenomenon is true even if Turkish historiography often tends, in the spirit of the nationalist narrative, to endow Turkish (Azerbaijani, Qashqai) speaking Iranian communities with a Turkish identity, suggesting that Turkish communities were the depositary of Iranian modernisation. However, the situation is perhaps rather that, although we find a significant number of Turkish-speaking actors in modernisatıon process of Iran, it was not language but Iranian cultural identity that was more dominant in the case of Turkic speaking groups of Iran.
[1]Abrahamian, Ervand, Modern İran Tarihi. Çeviren: Dilek Şendil. Türkiye İş Bankası, İstanbul, 2020. 85-86.
[2] Csirkés Ferenc Péter, Az iráni azeri-törökség. In: Kőrösi Csoma Sándor és Kelet népei. Budapest, 2005. 315.
[3] Söylemez, İsmail, Modern İran Kimliğinin İnşasında Dilin Rolü. In: Iran Düşünce Tarihi, Ankara, 2019. 163–164.
[4]Söylemez, İsmail, Modern İran Kimliğinin İnşasında Dilin Rolü. In: Iran Düşünce Tarihi, Ankara, 2019. 90.
[5] Kadıoğlu, Ahmet Murat, Türkiye-İran İlişkilerinde Dönüm Noktası: İran Şah Rıza Pehlevi’nin Türkiye Ziyaretinin Akşam Gazetesinde Yansımaları. In: Çukurova Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi, 2025, Cilt: 34, No: 1, 236–247.
Author: Péter Kövecsi-Oláh, advisor - LCTS, LUPS
Image source: https://thelionandthesun.org/422/from-ashes-to-empire-how-the-qajar-dynasty-came-to-rule-iran/