Transcript of video number one of Congress of Turks, from the video series of: “who we are? What we think? What we want?
Hello.
My name is Alireza Nazmi Afshar.
My friends and I from the Congress of Turks decided to introduce our political organization to the international democratic institutions and organizations, world societies, communities and people, by offering meaningful information about and insights into our efforts. We believe direct, sincere, and transparent information will help others better understand us.
Therefore, along with the Turkish and Farsi presentations under “What We Think, What We Want,” we have published a series of videos in English under “Who We Are, What We Think, What We Want.”
In November 2009, I was hosted by a Eurasian human rights organization in Turkey. During this trip, in addition to making several presentations to Turkish democratic organizations, politicians, NGOs, and human right organizations as well as individual activists, I also met several Iranian Turks, political and human right activists, professors, students, refugees, and political asylees.
On my way back to the United States, I also participated in a UNPO Forum on effective political participation in Geneva on November 12 and 13, 2009, representing the Iranian Turks Studies Center. The title of my presentation was “The Conditions Required for Effective Political Participation in Iran.”
After listening to all speakers from different countries, nations, cultures, and government structures, a common picture and scenario emerged. All of these completely different societies were facing a common dilemma: A wrongfully dominant, powerful totalitarian group, backed predominantly by outside forces, had malignantly taken over all sources and institutions, pushing the others aside or eliminating them altogether.
The change requirements that I suggested as well as the solutions others brought to the forum left me with one thought: Rather than cursing the darkness until the sun rises, isn’t it better to light a candle? While our people are struggling with daily issues—problems such as finding food, water, medicine, education, and security in small communities, societies, towns, and villages—we cannot give up; we cannot withdraw or sit on the sidelines, simply waiting for the sun to rise and abolish the darkness.
The Congress of Iranian Turks, with the hope of a better participation, was formed in December 2009 to address the real and daily political issues facing nonpolitical people, from disappointments in daily life to vital matters like local, provincial and even national elections. Knowing that without popular awareness, ethnic survival is not foreseeable, therefor we agreed that our main agenda is “education in the mother tongue nationwide”, and to fact check the historical narrative that has been written about us.
This is what we are.
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For five years we engaged in a hands-on, practical, considerate, respectful, and compromising approach with the Islamic Republic of Iran in the hopes of ensuring at least minimal participation in the process of electing, legislating, and governing the country at different levels.
Rather than rely on rumors, personal feelings, or specific interests and agendas, whether ours or others’, we employed actual and practical experience to conclude that the current status quo is beyond hope. It is beyond hope in term of wrong ideology, strategies, tactics, principles, structure, affiliations, agendas, along with racism and corruption.
The poisonous existence of the Islamic Republic is based on two contradicting fundamental foundations: an extreme and hateful Shi’ism and Shiite expansionism complicatedly mixed with the essence of a blind, destructive Arian–Persian nationalistic chauvinism.
The result is an Islamic Republic built as an absolute totalitarian regime—a regime beyond any hope, for any reform, moderation, or modification, except the obvious games played to mislead the west, which they successfully have
Three fundamental issues with this regime are:
A: Militant expansion, including but not limited to nuclear armament with an aggressive Persian imperialistic ambition.
B: Promoting, sponsoring, and controlling terrorism for the Persian Shiite expansion agendas within the country and abroad.
C – Last but not the least: Forced ethnic assimilation and resist doctrine imposing an historically expired, ethically broke, and principally inhuman “Arian Persian supremacy” of a minority, a quarter population of the country on the other three quarter, in a complex multi ethnic country at the most sensitive region of the world between Caspian see and the Gulf.
We at the Congress of Turks believe that the world rightfully, is very concern about the items one and two, the nuclear and the terrorism issues, which can be contained, manage and controlled, diplomatically and/or militantly, but shortsightedly ignoring the racist human right violations and putting it at a low priority class, or not in sight at all.
But we believe the ethnic injustice and unnecessarily created exploding racial hearted, ethnic division inevitably will run the country and its ethnicities in a civil war, bloodshed, and disastrous Balkanization of the region.
This is what we think
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Since the dawn of time, this country has always been and remains a multiethnic, multinational country governed primarily as an alliance of autonomic, provincial governments. This has been true since the Median alliance called Satraps, established seven centuries before Christ, until less than a century ago under the Qajar Empire called Memalik e mehruse ye Qajar, meaning the States of the Qajar Empire Union.
Iran was governed, protected, and ruled by Turkic empires for almost a thousand years, and Turks were known and accepted as the majority ethnicity within Iran, except for a few decades under the Pahlavi regime, which launched an unprecedented ethnic war and reported totally foul and dishonest ethnic statistics to the world. Today, despite Islamic Republic’s unethical propaganda, following the footsteps of pro Arian, Racist Pahlavi regime in fixing the reports and statistics, we have three reports from official Iranian authorities:
1 – Mr. Aliakbar Salehi, then-foreign minister of the Islamic Republic, mentioned during an interview that 40% of Iranians are Turk.
2 – Mr. Pour Mohammedi, then-secretary of interior, while reporting the results of the presidential election, stated that Turks control more than 13.5 million of 32 million (more than 40%) of the votes cast.
3 – On the first school day, Mr. Haji Babaie, then-secretary of education, announced that 70% of our students start school in a language other than their own.
These reports are not the propaganda of biased media; all of these individuals were quoted during official addresses.
This information depicts the ethnic population of Iran as Turks (more than 40%), Persians (30%), and all others, including Arabs, Kurds, Lors, Balochs, Bakhtiyais, and others (almost 30%).
Now, let us visit the facts about unjust distribution of power in Islamic Republic of Iran:
Despite this ethnic structure, the total armed forces are comprised of more than 60% Turks whereas the 19 high level commanders do not include a single Turk. In fact, all of these commanders are Persian.
Among the 12 members of the Guardian Consul, there is one Arab foreigner while the remaining 11 all are Persian.
The Parliament’s 27 high level supervisory positions include only 3 Turks, 5 Lors, and one Kurd; the remaining 18 are all Persians.
The 40 executive branch cabinet members include 4 Turks, 2 Kurds, 2 Lors, and 32 Persians, mainly from the City of Isfahan.
The 44 members of the Expediency Discernment Council include only one Turk, one Lor, and one Arab; the remaining 41 all are Persians.
The 7-member Assembly of Experts of the Leadership includes one Arab from a foreign country and six Persians.
These facts all come from the investigative report of the Tabriz Studies Center. This report shows that the Islamic Republic of Iran is destructively a Persian–Shiite totalitarian regime.
We believe that, in a multi-ethnic country like Iran, completely ignoring 70% of citizens and unjustifiably providing all decision-making positions to only 30% of its people are unacceptable and unjust, creating a clear path for a civil war, bloodshed, and the dissolution of the country.
Therefore, after trying all possible avenues of participation, we concluded that “this Regime is beyond any reform, moderation or openness”
We thereby modified our doctrines, principles, and bylaws, and changing the our name from “The Congress of Iranian Turks” to “The Congress of Turks”, and using it as a “DBA” for the for the existing institution, posted them on our new website at “CongressofTurks.org”.
We want a secular federal government structure.
We want a liberal democratic government ideology.
We want the removal of all limitations for organizing, registering, and operating political parties and organizations for all ethnicities of Iran.
We want all political prisoners, human right activists, and prisoners of conscience of all ethnicities being held in Iran to be freed.
We want an independent judiciary system.
We want official education in non- Farsi languages in schools for different ethnic provinces.
We want a Turkish language academy equal to the academy of Farsi language.
We want school-level curriculums to include education on human rights and the respectful presentation of all cultures, ethnicities, races and religions.
We want curriculums to teach tolerance and understanding of the different sexes, races, cultures, and religions.
We want to reestablish all Turkish names that were twisted or changed with the purpose of erasing our footsteps from the geography of our land in order to wipe out and deny our history.
We want to put an end to the disgusting slogans meant to wipe counties, nations, and peoples from the face of the earth.
We want better relations, and interactive coexistence with the world.
We want to create real economic prosperity, job opportunities, and trade with all neighboring countries.
We want to stop sponsoring, promoting, and planning any and all terrorist plots and activities.
We want a peaceful and friendly Iran, governed, flourished, shared, and protected by all Iranians.
This is what we want.
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We will talk again.
June 3rd 2017 – May God bless us all.