Tendency Towards Pan Turkism in Iranian Azerbaijan

Pan-Turkism has shown itself in two different decades in Iran: first in the Azerbaijan Democratic Party in 1945-1946 and secondly in the Muslim People's Republic Party in 1979. To maintain the social solidarity and national unity of Iran, it is crucial to study the influential factors of Pan-Turkism. To do this, we selected 400 subjects from four Azeri provinces – East Azerbaijan, West Azerbaijan, Ardabil, and Zanjan- as our research sample, using the multi-stage clustering sample. The regression analysis demonstrated that the independent variables such as insulting remarks from the press, relative deprivation, foreign mass media, Azeri ethnic elites, forbidding the Turkish Language, and arresting ethnic activists had significant relationships with Pan-Turkism. Key Words: Azerbaijan, Pan-Turkism, Azeri Turkish elites, relative deprivation, ethnic issues.