The Republic of Azerbaijan is home to several ethnic groups, religious communities, and nationalities that coexist in a diverse society. Understanding one of the core aspects of Azerbaijani social identity, such as it...The Republic of Azerbaijan is home to several ethnic groups, religious communities, and nationalities that coexist in a diverse society. Understanding one of the core aspects of Azerbaijani social identity, such as its Turkic component, sheds light on this theme. There is a common sentiment widely shared in society, which assumes that ethnic and religious diversity in Azerbaijan is purely superstructural, while Turkophone is regarded mostly as something inevitable and essential, a result of historical destiny and the outcome of location. In contrast, contemplating the phenomenon of the “Turkophone identity of Azerbaijan” is paramount both in terms of contemporary assessment and with respect to historical depth and cultural relevance. Moreover, it demonstrates that the Turkic ideological context is not only crucial to articulating the Azerbaijani national mythology, but also constitutes an economic realm of today’s politics of statistics and architectonic ethnic folklore. Ethnicity, as primarily a cultural phenomenon, opens the path for the identification of the intelligentsia and small cultural elite with the upper-class elements and for the detection of the indifference of other social strata or sections to any ethnic group. Yet the Turkic mythology could not operate like a traditional integration in a thoroughly stratified Oriental society because the Caucasus societies were, and are predominantly so, underdeveloped, preclassical, or lowest-class, semi-nomadic. The Turkic identity should, in the first instance, be examined conceptually and empirically in all these layers before and rather than in small networks stretched over the whole region. Turkic heritage operates today as a necessary component of national identification in scholarly literature and in everyday policy, the Turkic ideology has become a part of the first line of national country report writing in Azerbaijan. This will be an attempt to scrutinize these links not as separate issues but as more or less dialectic contours of the same dynamic identity.展开更多
文摘The Republic of Azerbaijan is home to several ethnic groups, religious communities, and nationalities that coexist in a diverse society. Understanding one of the core aspects of Azerbaijani social identity, such as its Turkic component, sheds light on this theme. There is a common sentiment widely shared in society, which assumes that ethnic and religious diversity in Azerbaijan is purely superstructural, while Turkophone is regarded mostly as something inevitable and essential, a result of historical destiny and the outcome of location. In contrast, contemplating the phenomenon of the “Turkophone identity of Azerbaijan” is paramount both in terms of contemporary assessment and with respect to historical depth and cultural relevance. Moreover, it demonstrates that the Turkic ideological context is not only crucial to articulating the Azerbaijani national mythology, but also constitutes an economic realm of today’s politics of statistics and architectonic ethnic folklore. Ethnicity, as primarily a cultural phenomenon, opens the path for the identification of the intelligentsia and small cultural elite with the upper-class elements and for the detection of the indifference of other social strata or sections to any ethnic group. Yet the Turkic mythology could not operate like a traditional integration in a thoroughly stratified Oriental society because the Caucasus societies were, and are predominantly so, underdeveloped, preclassical, or lowest-class, semi-nomadic. The Turkic identity should, in the first instance, be examined conceptually and empirically in all these layers before and rather than in small networks stretched over the whole region. Turkic heritage operates today as a necessary component of national identification in scholarly literature and in everyday policy, the Turkic ideology has become a part of the first line of national country report writing in Azerbaijan. This will be an attempt to scrutinize these links not as separate issues but as more or less dialectic contours of the same dynamic identity.
