Identity Construction, Mobilization, and Geopolitics. Nationalism and the Turks of Iran

Gilles Riaux

Abstract

The PhD thesis intends to understand the relations which the Turks of Iran (commonly called Azeris in Orientalist literature) maintain with nationalism. This composite group, subjected to transnational dynamics, has at the same time characteristics which identify it with the centre and the periphery of Iran : it allows a study of nationalism in its numerous facets, that it is an ideology supporting state-building or an identity movement demanding for a group the defence of its own interests and the workmanship of its political destiny. This research is based on three dimensions of analysis, conceived as consistent unities : Iranian nationalism and reconfiguration of intercommunity and territorial relations ; accumulation and transfer of symbolic resources in a transnational historical field, consisting in Iran, the Republic of Azerbaijan and Turkey ; Azerbaijani nationalism and its evolution from identity mobilisation to contentious politics in Iran. In order to do that, this work borrows from various research traditions : the sociology of collective action, historical sociology of politics and the geopolitics. They help to have a comparative look within a coherent space, a period of time in which several historical logics intertwine. In the end, this research is a contribution to the study of nationalist movements, replacing them in their own temporality and spatiality, which aims to enrich debates in social sciences, by opening up ordinarily specialized disciplinary fields.