A Critique of Javad Tabatabai's View on Turkish Language Education

Dr. Seyyed Javad Tabatabai has recently written an article titled “National Language and the Curriculum for Local Languages,” in the Shahrivar-Mehr issue of Iranshahr-e Emrooz magazine.[1] That article reveals new dimensions of Tabatabai’s view on the matter of local language education in Iran, which he had previously addressed mostly in veiled and implicit terms, and on this basis, it merits meticulous examination. The subject of this writing is a critique of the aforementioned article.

A Tone That Prevents Dialogue

As usual, we encounter the obstacle of Tabatabai’s sarcastic language. Dr. Tabatabai is famous for having a sardonic tongue. In this section, I will only point out two or three examples of his sarcastic tone, which at times distances the article’s tone completely from the academic neutrality expected by his readers, and in the next section, I will address a substantive critique of his writing.

In the article, Tabatabai sarcastically employs some concepts that we all know are sensitive for Turkish identity-seekers. The first example is his playing with the words “Tork” and “Turk.” We know that “Turk” is the word used in Turkic-speaking countries like Turkey and the Republic of Azerbaijan to refer to Turkish identity. Tabatabai writes in one place: “Atatürk, before he became Ata’turk’, knew that the Turks, in order to become a nation, had to have a ‘national’ language and culture, and of course, he was shrewder than to know that Iranians have had a language and culture since ancient times. Therefore, Atatürk was compelled, in order to create a new nation, to ‘cobble together some precedents,’ that is, to sever the connection of the Turks’ language with the language and culture of Iran.” (p. 9) (The very phrase “cobble together precedents” in the preceding sentence is also sarcastic.)

The third example is his repeated, sarcastic reference to the collection of Dede Qorqud stories. Referring to the Ministry of Science and Technology’s directive regarding the Azerbaijani Turkish language education program in universities of three Turkic-inhabited provinces and linking it, somewhat unjustifiably, to the slogan of indigenization, Tabatabai writes: “In this recent decade, when the slogan of the ‘indigenization’ of science has robbed sleep from the eyes of scientists, many of whom cannot even write the national language correctly, I, as someone interested in this discussion, have constantly kept my eye on this train, ‘which politics drives and how empty it goes,’ wondering which ‘Turkestani’ path it was on, and now, with great astonishment, I hear that according to the Ministry of Science’s information, the train has apparently reached the ‘Dede Qorqud’ station in Kazakhstan!” (p. 5) A tone of this sort, especially on an important subject like the relationship between national identity and the curriculum for local languages, where we need empathetic dialogue among intellectuals, political activists, and ordinary people, is a barrier to dialogue. [2] Nevertheless, the author tries to analyze Tabatabai’s main arguments without paying heed to this language.To reject the spelling “Azarbaijan” instead of “Azerbaijan” by some identity-seekers, he also writes: “The scholars of the Turk nation have explained that ‘Azarbaijan’ is composed of three words in ‘ancient Turki’ and means ‘the dwelling place of the mighty Az people.’ Of course, this narrative has been fabricated for the ‘Turk people’ in Iran, otherwise the government of the Republic of Azerbaijan, to attract tourists from Europe, by showing a fire temple in Baku, officially translates the name of its country as Land of fire.” (p. 10, footnote) It is natural that Tabatabai does not use “scholars” in this phrase as equivalent to “wise and learned,” but intends the opposite. The author of this writing himself does not agree with the spelling “Azarbaijan” for “Azerbaijan” and finds it inappropriate. However, he firmly believes that the use of such a tone, especially by an intellectual who has many followers and readers, constricts the space for dialogue in the public sphere.

Turkish Can Be Taught, Provided It Remains Weak!

In the author’s view, the summary of Tabatabai’s argument regarding the teaching of Azerbaijani Turkish in Iran is as follows: “Turkish can be taught, provided it remains weak!” Let me explain.

In Tabatabai's view, language, besides being a carrier of knowledge and culture, is also a weapon for political power. This point is precise and correct. However, the presupposition that this power must be exclusively held by the national language (which, in his view, apparently is always only one language) is not necessarily an established and proven assumption. He writes: "The Persian language, like all other national languages, in addition to being the language of culture and knowledge, is also the language of political power. From the beginning of the Islamic period, Dari Persian has been the language of the court, the locus of power, and from the time Ya'qub Layth addressed the Arabic-speaking poet saying: 'Why must one say that which I do not understand?', from the Tahirids and Samanids to a Turkic slave like Mahmud of Ghazni and the Seljuks and Shah Ismail, etc., the Persian language has been the language of political power for preserving Iran's territorial integrity. There is no doubt that Sultan Mahmud was more Turk than many of today's 'Turks' [the same sarcastic tone!], but he possessed enough policy and sagacity to know that his 'mother tongue' was not sufficient for governance." (p. 8, emphasis mine)

Tabatabai goes on to say that the odes of poets are also their weapons, and Mahmud of Ghazni was aware of this. Regarding the Turkish language of Turkey, he also writes: "The current Turkish language in the Republic of Turkey was a weapon that its founder consciously employed to create a 'nation' from a community that defined itself as an 'ummah'." (p. 8) I find this observation regarding the relationship between language and power to be accurate. The problem lies where Tabatabai insists that the political power of language in every nation-state must be exclusively and solely held by one language. I have doubts about this presupposition, which I find to be a nineteenth-century assumption. In any case, Tabatabai believes that in Iran, the political power of language must remain the monopoly of the Persian language, and one of the main motivations for this presupposition of his is the concern for territorial integrity.

The reference point for Tabatabai's view on the matter of local language education is the situation in Europe, specifically France, in the modern era and particularly up until the beginning of the twentieth century. He writes: "The strategic position of language in the creation of nation-states in the modern history of Europe is also recognized. In some regions of France, before the creation of the centralized nation-state, many languages other than French were spoken, but the requirements of creating a nation-state forced the kings and political figures of that country before the Revolution of 1789 to 'impose' a single language as the national language in all its provinces, a policy that continued especially after the Great Revolution, and local languages were consigned to oblivion." (p. 10)

The difference between Iran and France, in Tabatabai's view, is that the strategic position of the Persian language in relation to other local languages did not occur through imposition but rather happened completely naturally and historically. He writes: "In Iran, throughout all its historical periods, only one language [i.e., Persian] has been able to become the standard scientific and cultural language, but all other languages, according to their capabilities, have produced a kind of literature of their own. All these languages and their literature are forms of the languages and culture of Greater Iran, and it is obvious that efforts must be made to preserve them, but one must not weave myths and fantasize about them. The national language must remain the language of knowledge and culture of this country. In Iran, other local languages and their literature are not comprehensible except within the national language and literature, and one must not fabricate a history and origin for them." (p. 11)

As we can see, Tabatabai believes in preserving non-Persian local languages, albeit in a very limited form. The answer to the question of whether Persian became the national language of Iran completely naturally, or whether, at certain stages, as in France or many other Western countries, the mechanism of coercion and imposition was also clearly used, is not easy, contrary to Tabatabai's opinion. Despite the long history of the Persian language, it cannot be denied that during the establishment of the modern state in Iran after the Constitutional Revolution, imposition was also one of the mechanisms of nation-building in Iran.

From the corners of Tabatabai's remarks in this article, as well as the controversial interview “Settling Scores with the Guerrillas” [3] published three years earlier with similar themes in Mehrnameh, it emerges that for him, preserving local languages at the level of the language of “the common people” is sufficient, and one should not go beyond that lest these languages possibly turn into scientific languages. It is perhaps in this vein that Tabatabai writes: “If the people who speak the Azerbaijani Turkish language are to become acquainted with the literary works of their language, there is absolutely no necessity to import its sources from countries that have no relation to the tradition of the Azerbaijani people. Despite the poisonous and utterly false propaganda that deafens the ears, the publication of the Book of Dede Qorqud was never banned in Azerbaijan, and I myself had seen copies of it in the bookshops of Tabriz from the second half of the 1330s [1950s].” (p. 11) The logical conclusion of these words is probably that we must close our borders to Turkey and the Republic of Azerbaijan, and allow no linguistic or cultural exchange between the Turkish of that side and this side. It is sufficient if Azerbaijani Turkish remains at the level of the Turkish of the common people, or at most Dede Qorqud and Ostad Shahriyar's Heydar Babaya Salam, and is taught. Teaching Turkish beyond that limited extent — as intended by the recent program of the Ministry of Science for teaching Azerbaijani Turkish in universities — is detrimental to national security and territorial integrity. This recommendation of Tabatabai is both incorrect from the perspective of truth-seeking and justice-seeking, and it is not feasible to implement. In a world where in-person and virtual communication has become so easy, the people of countries very easily watch each other's television programs, travel to each other's countries intermittently, and even hold dual citizenship, this is not possible. The political developments in the region also clearly show that the fates of many people in the Middle East are intertwined, and solving many matters — for example, the complex and tragic issue of Syria [4] — is not possible without adopting transnational perspectives.

Regarding the Ottoman Turkish language, which is the mother of today's Turkish language of Turkey, Tabatabai has written: “That language [Ottoman Turkish] was predominantly Persian and also — through Persian — Arabic, and any Persian speaker who knew a little Azerbaijani Turkish could read its most important texts: for example, one can refer to Sudi's commentaries on Hafez and Sa'di, and Anqaravi's commentary on the Masnavi.” (p. 8) There is no doubt that Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish are full of Persian and Arabic words. However, the statement that if someone has a familiarity with Azerbaijani Turkish at the level of oral acquaintance, they are able to read Ottoman Turkish (and a fortiori modern Turkish) texts, is a fallacy. This claim is like saying that because Arabic has lent many words to Persian, anyone who knows Arabic can read and write Persian with little effort. Naturally, this is not possible.

A Critique of Tabatabai's Conception of the Nation-State

In my opinion, the foundation of the flaw in Tabatabai's view on the issue of teaching local languages in schools and universities is that he holds a nineteenth-century conception of the nation-state, meaning an idea of the nation-state for a world in which today's extensive communications, satellite networks in various languages accessible to almost everyone, daily travels of citizens of countries to one another, the internet, the phenomenon of multiple citizenship, etc., did not exist. In the era of Europe from which Tabatabai has taken his model of the nation-state and upon which he insists, most people, due to technological limitations, were only in contact with the inhabitants of their own geographical borders, and transnational communication in its modern form had few instances. Today's world is completely different, but Tabatabai ignores this difference.

Another point Tabatabai overlooks is the question of justice in the distribution of political power. He rightly emphasizes that language bears a relation to political power, but he does not answer why those whose mother tongue is not the country's national language should not benefit from the advantages of linguistic power, provided the country's territorial integrity is not harmed. Is there no way to reconcile the preservation of national and territorial unity, on the one hand, with the equitable distribution of power between the national language and local languages, on the other? It is the concern for such a felicitous reconciliation that leads us to take seriously a kind of moderate multiculturalism (inspired by the theories of many twentieth-century political philosophers such as Charles Taylor, Will Kymlicka, Chandran Kukathas, David Miller, and many others, to whose works there is never any reference in Tabatabai's writings). Tabatabai, whether deliberately or inadvertently, ignores the works of the aforementioned thinkers.

Tabatabai believes that the state's duty is to secure the general interests of its respective nation and rightly emphasizes that "in understanding and interpreting the principles of the constitution as well, one cannot merely suffice with its literal appearance, and in every case, natural rights and human rights must be introduced as fundamental criteria." (p. 11) The emphasis on the centrality of human rights in interpreting the Constitution of the Islamic Republic is an important and interesting point. However, Tabatabai entirely dismisses the possibility that the teaching of local languages could be considered part of a revised theory of human rights. (The view of many thinkers whose names I mentioned above. Among Iranian intellectuals, Arash Naraghi and Mostafa Malekian also hold such a view.) The issue becomes more complicated when Tabatabai considers national and territorial unity a principle even more important than universal human rights and, following the lines above, writes: "The most important criterion in understanding and interpreting the constitution and implementing it is the safeguarding of national unity and the territorial integrity of the country." (p. 11)

The conclusion of Tabatabai's article "The National Language and the Program for Teaching Local Languages" is a fatwa-like decree that he—as a "compass" meant to prevent Iran's train from heading toward the "Dede Korkut station"—issues on the invalidity of the Ministry of Science's ruling permitting the teaching of local languages in the universities of three Turkic-speaking provinces: "Any action issued by any institution contrary to the direction of national unity and territorial integrity is null and void and devoid of any validity, for it is obvious that no nation possessed of sound reason, like any rational individual, commits suicide, nor does it permit any institution to bring about its demise. The national government and state, according to the contract established between the state and the nation, are responsible and obligated before the entire nation, and, by this consideration, have no right to adopt measures that pave the way for the destruction of national unity. [. . . ] In such cases, governmental institutions cannot make their own understanding and interpretation—or that of their employees and administrative apparatus—of the principles of the constitution the criterion." (p. 12) Tabatabai goes on to seriously forbid the Ministry of Science from consulting experts who have a more open approach to the subject of teaching local languages—in accordance with the demand for implementing Article 15 of the Constitution—by making the innuendo that the "anti-national stance" of such individuals is like "Sa'di's tale of love," the story of which "is on every street corner's lips"! (p. 12) As if only those who think like him are national.

There is no doubt that territorial integrity is a fundamental basis for interpreting the constitution. However, the point that Tabatabai leaves unanswered is this: if a conflict arises between the interpretation of political agents regarding public and national interests and the standards of human rights or natural rights, which side should be taken? As a radical example (which, unfortunately, is not entirely irrelevant to the current situation in Syria), can territorial integrity be preserved through genocide? Tabatabai's political thought, neither in this article nor in his other works, answers such questions and ignores them. Tabatabai has stated in the article under discussion that the meaning of the action by the Ministry of Science and the Iranian government in permitting the teaching of the Azerbaijani Turkish language in universities is to "separate large groups of the Iranian people from the body of the Iranian nation in order to pave the way for the country's disintegration." (pp. 9-10) In the author's view, the opposite of this analysis is correct. Attention to the teaching of local languages in universities and schools, which can be considered part of the project of minimal multiculturalism intended by the author, in contrast to what he has termed bloated nationalism[5], blocks the path to separatism or at least greatly diminishes the motivations for such a tendency. Should the fact that the government of the Islamic Republic, after years of faltering neglect, has taken the issue of teaching local languages seriously really be such a cause for concern? A form of moderate multiculturalism provides a better model of the concept of national government, compared to Tabatabai's homogenizing[6] and nineteenth-century concept of this idea. The recent decision of the Ministry of Science should be supported, not attacked in the name of patriotism.

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Footnotes

[1] See. Seyyed Javad Tabatabai, "National Language and the Program for Teaching Local Languages", Iranshahr-e Emrooz, Year 1, No. 3, Shahrivar-Mehr 1395, pp. 5-12. (See this link)

[2] For other critiques regarding Javad Tabatabai's acerbic tone and its consequences for dialogue, see. Soroush Dabbagh, "The Second Fardid: A Critique of Javad Tabatabai's Mode of Confronting His Critics", Andisheh Pouya, No. 16, Khordad 1393, this link.

and Akbar Ganji, "The Language of Seyyed Javad Tabatabai", Zamaneh, 3 Khordad 1389, this link.

[3] See. "Mehrnameh's Conversation with Seyyed Javad Tabatabai: Settling Scores with the Guerrillas", 15 Tir 1392, available here.

[4] On Syria, also see the section "Iran, Islam and Politics in the Middle East" in this article by the author.

[5] In this context, also see this article (in defense of forming a Turkish-speaking faction in Parliament)

and this article by the author (explaining why bloated nationalism can paralyze democracy)

[6] assimilationist

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A Critique of Javad Tabatabai's View on Turkish Language Education

Author: Meysam Badamchi

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