Noble Turks of Iran:
Iran is on the verge of a very important and vital transformation. The public struggle for freedom and democracy in Iran has begun. If freedom and democracy are obtained, all the other rights of the Iranian nationalities can be won peacefully and without bloodshed.
Now the people of some regions of Iran haven rise to push back dictatorship and absolutism and to change the Constitution in Iran. These three goals are not minor, so that we Turks of Iran can ignore them and so not have a role in future developments in Iran.
We cannot sacrifice the strategic goals of the Turkish people of Iran in order to settle accounts with the central government in accordance with a simple-minded calculus. The party which has usurped our elementary and civil rights was the central governments and not the Persians. The Persians who, like we Iranian Turks, have been on the verge of dying from the absolutism and ambitions of the governors of the royalist age as well as that of the absolute rule of the Islamic jurist and have risen up.
If we today, due to an error in our calculations or because we are angry with the Persians and reformists and do not wish to associate with them, we abandon the people who have risen up and come into the streets, we are taking the side of the supporters of the forces of the absolutist government of the absolute rule of the Islamic jurist and are abandoning to the government the people who are trying to achieve democracy and constitutional change in Iran. In this case, we are giving the the central government, which is the enemy and usurper of the rights of all of us, the Iranian nationalities, and particularly the great Turkish nationality, a free hand to crush the people who are in the streets.
Under these circumstances, we will be guilty of the same strategic error which they committed when they did not support the popular uprisings of the Turkish people of Iran and we were crushed. Their being crushed have not been and will not be for the benefit of either the Persian or the Turks, or the civil rights of all the Iranians or for democracy in Iran.
We Turks and Azerbaijanis of Iran must take advantage of this exceptional and historical opportunity which might possibly not be repeated so quickly and struggle to win the rights for which we have struggled from the times before the Constitutional Revolution to this day.
The fall of absolutism, the rule of the Islamic jurist, and the change of the Iranian Constitution are the strategic goals of all of us Iranians in the period. As long as these matters are not done away with, we Turks will not be able to win by ourselves and so quickly the rights we are after .
If the people (not the government) are abandoned in this struggle and we Turks of Iran do not support them, the changes which we could have achieved in the space of a few months would be thrown back for years. Instead of the handful of casualties we would have to sacrifice today, hundreds if not thousands would have to be sacrificed. It is not so easy to imagine winning when we are by ourselves and the absolutists have greater strength and self-confidence (after have crushed the people who had risen up).
We must stand beside the Turks and Persians who have risen up in Tehran and other cities. Let us divide our common enemy, the forces of absolutism, and weaken it. Then the enemy’s defeat and retreat is assured.
In Iran’s modern history, we Turks were alone in the struggle against absolutism, the rule of the Islamic jurist, and legal and civil inequality. The other Iranian nationalities did not support us in our struggle. They did not recognize our civil rights. We were oppressed and ridiculed. But we must not hold a grudge against them and abandon them in this struggle so that both they and we might be crushed.
And now we call on all organizations, parties, political and human rights societies and particular on that zealous son of Azerbaijan, Sayyed Hosein Musavi of Tabriz, to issue statements defending the civil and general rights of the Iranian nations, and particularly the great Turkish nation of Iran, and call them to enter the field of battle.
We call on the Turks of Iran in the regions of Azerbaijan (East and West Azerbaijan, Ardebil, Zanjan, and Qazvin), Tehran, Karaj, Kurdistan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Turkeman Sahra, Khorasan, Shiraz, Isfahan, Yezd, Kerman, Arak, Semnan, Hamadan, and other regions of Iran to add their voices to the Turkish and Persian people who have come into the streets and are struggling to overthrow absolutism and change the Constitution and come into the streets and eliminate absolutism, but along with general slogans, let them shout slogans which specifically address their own rights and regions.
On behalf of the undersigned, we call on all the children of the Iranian Turks in the armed forces, the Revolutionary Guards, the police, intelligence, the Basij, the special forces, etc. to not open fire on the people. We call on the bazaaris, the managers and workers to launch a general strike and continue the strike until absolutism is abolished and freedom, democracy, and a change in the Constitution is established.
Long live freedom and democracy!
Long live the Iranian nations, and especially the Turkish nation of Azerbaijan!
