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The Iran newspaper cockroach cartoon controversy occurred in response to a cartoon drawn by cartoonist Mana Neyestani and published in the Iranian Friday-magazine Iran-e-jomee on 12 May 2006.

The cartoon describes nine methods of dealing with cockroaches by depicting a Persian-speaking child and a cockroach. During the first method, when the cockroach does not understand him, the child decides to talk to the cockroach in "cockroach language", but the cockroach replies by saying "Namana?" ('what' in the Azerbaijani language). The cartoon has been interpreted by people as an insult to Iranian Azerbaijanis.

Contents of the article

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The article which the cartoons accompany is entitled "How to Stop the Cockroaches from Making Us into Cockroaches?". It is a satirical article in a children's weekly newspaper. The cartoon depicts nine methods of dealing with cockroaches including dialogue, oppression, elimination, population control, and violence. The text of the paragraph in the first image describes the first method, translated as follows:

"First Method: Dialogue"

Some people believe that one should not resort to violence as an initial step, because that will just take all the fun out of the process. So we must first try to come to the table like civilized people and have a dialogue with the cockroaches. But the problem is that a cockroach cannot understand human language . And cockroach grammar is so difficult—nobody has yet discovered which of their verbs end in "ing"—that 80% of the cockroaches themselves do not know it and prefer to speak in other languages. When even the cockroaches do not understand their own language, how could you possibly understand it?! This is precisely why negotiations hit a dead-end and the sweet methodology of violence becomes a necessity!

The child proceeds to speak in "cockroach language" to the cockroach, but the cockroach does not understand him and replies "Namana?" ('what'). Namana is originally an Azerbaijani-Turkic word, but is also sometimes used in Persian as a slang. In other sections of the article where the violence option is entertained, the cockroach speaks in Persian to the child.

The article's use of the keywords "dialogue" (Persian: گفتمان) and "violence" (Persian: خشونت ورزی), plus discussions about problems understanding the language of the "cockroaches", can be interpreted as tacit references to the reformist nomenclature in contrast to the language of the conservatives in Iran. The famous reformist motto "dialogue among civilizations", used by Iran's former president Mohammad Khatami, was a source of criticism among the intelligentsia, because they questioned how it could be possible to have such a dialogue between Iran and the western civilizations when it was not even possible to have a dialogue and mutual understanding between reformist and conservative Iranians.

Aftermath

The publication of the cartoon caused controversy among Iranian Azerbaijanis for allegedly comparing them to cockroaches. It was deemed by some people as part of a long-standing chauvinistic attitude towards Iranian Azerbaijanis among parts of the Persian-speaking majority.

The controversy resulted in massive protests in May 2006 throughout the predominantly Azerbaijani-populated cities of Tabriz, Urmia, Ardabil, Zanjan, and Naghadeh, as well as a number of smaller towns. After violent reactions from the Iranian police, the initially peaceful protests turned violent in most cases, with protesters throwing stones and damaging government-related properties. Amnesty International claims that "hundreds, if not thousands, were arrested and tens of Azerbaijani-Turks reportedly shot and killed by the security forces", while the Iranian authorities claim that 330 people were arrested during the protests, and only four demonstrators were killed.

The Iranian government promptly responded to the events by temporarily shutting down the Iran newspaper, arresting the cartoonist Mana Neyestani, who is himself an ethnic Azeri, and the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, Mehrdad Ghasemfar. It further accused outside forces of "playing the nationalistic card".

Allegations of foreign interference

Emad Afrough, head of the Majlis Cultural Commission at the time, said that pan-Turkists were involved in creating the tensions. Other members of the Iranian government blamed it on the United States, Israel, and the United Kingdom, suspecting the incitement of ethnic strife in Iran. It was alleged that the United States is conducting covert operations in Iran and is allied with Iran's neighbor, the Republic of Azerbaijan. Abbas Maleki, a senior research fellow at Harvard University and former deputy foreign minister of Iran, supported this thesis, stating:

I think that when President Bush says all options are on the table, the destabilization of Iran's ethnic provinces is one of them. Don't forget, Mr Mahmudali Chehregani, one of the pan-Turkist leaders agitating for a separatist Azeri agenda, was in Washington last year by invitation of the Defense Department.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, reportedly a former CIA operative, had stated in the early 1990s: "Accessible through Turkey and ex-Soviet Azerbaijan, eyed already by nationalists in Baku, more westward-looking than most Iran, and economically going nowhere, Iran's richest agricultural province was an ideal CIA theater."

One factor driving the protests was the separatist GünAz TV channel, which incited parts of the population to riots and agitation. According to Hürriyet newspaper, a Turkish state investigation found that the satellite channels being used to host GünAz were being rented by the American CIA, which resulted in the channel's banning from usage of Türksat satellites.

According to Touraj Atabaki, well-known expert on Iranian Azerbaijanis, there might be some truth behind the Iranian government's allegations of a foreign plot, yet the responsibility for the unrest lies first and foremost with the central government. Similarly, writer Iason Athanasiadis opines that "there is no hard evidence pointing toward the troubles as being anything but domestic".

See also

• Anti-Azerbaijani sentiment

References

1. "Iran: Continuing crackdown against peaceful critics". Amnesty International. 26 September 2006. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
2. Wood, Graeme. "Iran: A Minority Report". The Atlantic. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
3. Ali M. Koknar (6 June 2006). "Iranian Azeris: A Giant Minority". www.washingtoninstitute.org. Retrieved 10 July 2017.
4. "Iran's Azeri minority protests mocking cartoon". Iran Focus. Reuters. 23 May 2006.
5. Amnesty International. Iran, Annual Report, 2007 Archived 13 July 2007 at the Wayback Machine
6. "Iran Says 330 Arrested Over Recent Cartoon Unrest". RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. 22 June 2006. Retrieved 31 December 2017.
7. "Iran Azeris protest over cartoon". 28 May 2006. Retrieved 19 January 2018.
8. Daria Vaisman. "The other cartoon protests: Large demonstrations broke out across Iran in May 2006 to protest a cartoon insulting to Azeris", The Christian Science Monitor, 22 May 2007.
9. "Student Demo in Tehran University". Iran-daily. 25 May 2006. Archived from the original on 12 October 2008.
10. ^ Iason Athanasiadis (8 June 2006). "Foreign plots and cockroaches in Iran". Asia Times Online. Archived from the original on 16 June 2006.
11. Ghasemi Turki, Mohammad-Ali; Namvar, Jafar; Mowlavi, Seyed Shams ul-Din (2008). "Role of Ethnic Tendencies in Urban Crises in the June 2006 Events in Urumieh". Police Management Studies Quarterly (in Persian). 3 (3): 323–343 – via Scientific Information Database.
12. "Ankara'dan İran'a 'denge' politikası" [A 'balance' policy of Ankara towards Iran]. Hürriyet (in Turkish). 8 November 2006. Retrieved 26 October 2022.
13. "İttifak böyle çalışıyor" [This is how the Alliance works]. soL Günlük Siyasi Gazete (in Turkish). 13 November 2006. Retrieved 24 October 2022.
14. Jean-Christophe Peuch (6 January 2006). "Iran: Cartoon protests signal Azeri frustration". Archived from the original on 27 August 2006.

External links

• Washington Institute.

• Azerbaijani language
• Editorial cartoons
• Satirical cartoons
• Mass media in Iran
• 2006 controversies
• Cartoon controversies
• Azerbaijan–Iran relations
• Anti-Azerbaijanism in Iran
• Insects in art
• 2006 in Iran