Istanbul pushes to strengthen the “Turkic world,” rejecting “Eurocentric” descriptions of the region. But Tajik historian Kamoluddin Abdulloev objects: “Iran would have as many arguments to assert its historical influence.” In a land where the phases of Mongol domination and the spread of Islam have caused divisions and recompositions between Shiites and Sunnis.
Dushanbe () – The Turkish television channel Trt Haber has reported that the Ministry of National Education in Ankara has ordered that the term “Turkestan” be used in school programs instead of “Central Asia”. The latter is described as a “Eurocentric” definition, which does not reflect the historical and cultural specificities of the region, and emphasizes the need to restore historical truth by supporting the strengthening of the “Turkic world”.
A phrase by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is recalled, according to which “we will work side by side to make the coming period a Turkish era, spreading our vision of the ‘Turkish Century’ through the Organization of Turkish States (Otg).” Also often quoted is an expression by Enver Pasha, the Ottoman commander who led the Young Turk revolution a century ago: “The best of the non-Turks is worth much less than the youngest and most inexperienced of the Turks.”
This insistence on the “Turkization” of all of Central Asia provokes debate and perplexity in all the States involved, but especially in Tajikistan, a country where Turkish influence collides with an even greater dependence on Persian roots, where many denounce “pan-Turkism” as a new form of colonization. In the first two post-Soviet decades, between 1992 and 2010, Turkey’s expansionist positions were also opposed by the then president of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, as well as Turkmenistan’s desire to jealously preserve its neutrality, to the point that, To this day, Ashgabat remains only an observer within the OGTT.
The Tajik historian Kamoluddin Abdulloev comments on Radio Ozodi that “if the Turks want to call us Turkestan, then Iran could associate us with Afghanistan and call us Iranzamin, having as many arguments to affirm its historical influence in the region”, remembering the times of Khorasan, the ” Great Iran” or Iranshahrom. After all, Iran shares a border with these countries (Turkmenistan and Afghanistan), unlike Türkiye. Until the 18th century, Khorasan and Maverannakhr (Transoxiana, the Central Asian area north of the Oxus River) were considered a single region, distinguishing western Iran from eastern Iran, with a common history and cultural centers such as Ispahan, Herat, Samarkand, Bukhara and Delhi, to China. Iranzamin or Greater Iran also included parts of the Caucasus, and the Chinese considered Iran to be “the West” all the way to Europe.
According to many scholars, the Tajiks were “Islamized Sogdians”, eastern Iranians from the Sogda region, with a history dating back more than a thousand years before the arrival of the Turks in the 6th century AD. The intense and mutually beneficial collaboration between Sogdians and Turks lasted only a couple of centuries, and was interrupted with the spread of Islam in these areas in the 8th century. Even from a linguistic point of view, “the borders of Greater Iran are much broader than its geographical limits,” Abdulloev recalls, to the point that contemporary orientalism uses the term Persian, indicating that Persian is the “lingua franca.” » of vast territories from Turkey to China, and from the Caucasus to India. Farsi is the main language of Iranzamin, the first after Arabic to be taught in madrassas.
The history of these lands is especially complex and is full of opportunities to argue one thesis against another, or even combine them in the personalities of great poets and men of letters who wrote in several local languages. The phases of Mongol domination and the spread of Islam caused divisions and recompositions between Shiites and Sunnis. Until modern times, with the arrival of the Russians, who in turn imposed other cultural and linguistic dimensions, and the atheistic Soviet domination, which considered Central Asia as the “backyard” of the empire, now called to untangle the threads of memory between the pretensions of the surrounding great powers and the desire for independence of the people.
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