55 Azerbaijani NGOs send open letter to Pezeshkian: mother-tongue education for Azerbaijanis in Iran

Representatives of 55 Azerbaijani non-governmental organisations have sent an open letter to Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. They ask him to take the initiative personally in securing the right of the millions of Azerbaijanis living in Iran — the Turks of South Azerbaijan — to be educated in their mother tongue. According to the authors, the right is already enshrined in Iran's constitution; what is needed now is practical action.

The NGOs set out concrete proposals: systematic teaching of Azerbaijani in schools, opening secondary schools and universities that teach in the language, training teachers, producing textbooks and curricula, and creating the legal and institutional mechanisms to make this work.

The letter recalls Pezeshkian's own attachment to the language: he recites Azerbaijani poetry and uses Azerbaijani proverbs in his speeches, speaks his mother tongue at home and, as a surgeon, operated on many Azerbaijani patients. His visit to Khankendi and Shusha and his relations with President Ilham Aliyev are also welcomed.

The authors close by recalling Mohammad-Hossein Shahriyar, known for his poems dedicated to the mother tongue, and say they are ready to support such an initiative in education, science and culture as far as they can.