Iranian television show sparks outrage among Azeris

ISTANBUL

A children’s program aired on the Iranian state television has sparked outrage among Azeris for allegedly ridiculing and insulting the community on air.

Iranian and Turkish academics told Anadolu Agency Thursday that the insults on the children's program on IRIB TV-2 were not "coincidental" and claimed the incident had "moved fault lines" among the Azeris.

The “Fitilehha” program showed an ethnic Azeri brushing his teeth with a toilet brush and also went on to ridicule accents of ethnic Azeris, who are also known as Azerbaijani Turks.

“Dialogues in the program, which humiliated Azerbaijani Turks, has moved fault lines in the Iranian community,” Muhammad Mohebbi, a lecturer at the Tehran-based Shahid Beheshti University, said.

“I think these kinds of events are not a mere coincidence,” Iranian researcher and author Mohammed Rahmaniferd said. "Azeris also think that this incident has been done on purpose."

Yalcin Sarikaya, an assistant professor at Giresun University in Turkey’s northeastern province, said that the reaction of Azeris to the incident was "quite normal".

“Turks in Iran cannot be seen as a minority and they play a very important role in shaping the political history of this country for around 1,000 years,” Sarikaya said.

Referring to a cartoon published on a state-owned Iranian newspaper that depicted a cockroach speaking Azeri, which eventually provoked riots in 2006, he said: "This [incident] shows no lessons have been learnt".

Approximately, 30 million ethnic Azeris live in Iran.