As I write, the Iranian people are risking their lives, protesting for the overthrow of the Iranian regime. The death toll keeps rising, as numerous protesters are getting massacred. Many other protesters have been arrested, tortured, and sexually assaulted. Protesters who are detained are at grave risk of being executed for “waging war against God” and other imaginary crimes. In the wake of these protests, ethnic Azerbaijani women in Iran want Western feminists to stand in solidarity with them.
Human rights activist Turkan Bozkurt stated, “Azerbaijani women are situated at the intersection of gender-based repression and long-standing ethnic discrimination, which can compound vulnerability during periods of state crackdowns. Human rights reporting shows that demonstrations and strikes have involved Azerbaijani-majority cities such as Tabriz, Urmia, Khoy, and Ardabil, alongside wider nationwide mobilization, while security forces have used lethal force and mass arrests amid communication restrictions that further obscure the full scale of abuses.”
Dissident journalist Ahmet Obali stressed, “Today in South Azerbaijan, women are in the front lines of fighting this repressive theocratic regime. Nargis Mohammedi, who is a Nobel Peace laureate and serving a prison term in the notorious Evin Prison, is herself an Azerbaijani from Zanjan. Her ethnic identity has been omitted from international coverage of her.”
The persecution of Azerbaijani women
For decades, Azerbaijani women in Iran have been deprived of the right to study and work in their mother tongue. Whenever they protested against this, they faced arrest, torture, and even execution.
The repression against minority languages has led to a situation where Iran Human Rights reported that the illiteracy rate for women stands at 20% in South Azerbaijan. This high illiteracy rate has adversely affected these women in their dealings with the Iranian judiciary. According to IHR, “Ethnic regions such as South Azerbaijan are overrepresented in the women’s death penalty cases.”
However, Bozkurt noted that the Azerbaijani women in Iran who are joining the protests have a different list of priorities from their Persian feminist counterparts.
For example, she claims that while upper-class Persian women are passionate about fighting against mandatory hijab, an issue that affects all Iranian women, South Azerbaijani women have other, more pressing issues, such as “honor killings, child brides, access to education and even environmental issues like access to water and food that exacerbate existing inequalities.”
She stressed: “The crisis around Lake Urmia’s drying has been widely linked to mismanagement and policy-driven factors such as damming and agricultural water diversion, with significant social and health implications for surrounding communities. Pollution concerns in the Aras River basin have also been documented in scientific studies, including findings of heavy metals in parts of the river system. Since water scarcity and environmental decline often increase unpaid household and caregiving burdens, these shocks place disproportionate pressure on Azerbaijani women.”
Facing domestic and state violence
To illustrate this point, Farzaneh Mehdizadeh, the director-general of the Clinical Examination Office of the Forensic Medicine Organization, announced that in 2022, 75,000 women and children have referred to forensic medicine because of physical injuries caused by domestic violence.
“This harrowing figure serves as a reminder that the discourse surrounding discrimination against women in Iran must extend far beyond the singular and homogenic focus.”
This does not mean that protesting mandatory hijab is not important for South Azerbaijani women. Sociologist Sevil Suleymani proclaimed: “Azerbaijani women protested compulsory hijab, state violence, and gender apartheid just like other Iranian women. But they also protested something deeper: the erasure of their ethnic identity. Many Azerbaijani women were injured, arrested, or killed during the protests, but their Azerbaijani identity was often deliberately omitted in the media. They were framed only as 'Iranian women,' never as Azerbaijani women resisting both gender oppression and ethnic marginalization.”
She continued, “This is why global attention has focused so strongly on Mahsa Amini, whose death rightly sparked worldwide outrage, while Azerbaijani women’s resistance has remained largely invisible. The issue is not competition between victims, but selective recognition. Western media and even segments of global feminist discourse often universalize Iranian women’s struggles, overlooking the internal hierarchies of ethnicity, language, and race that structure inequality within Iran. Azerbaijani women fall through this gap.”
South Azerbaijanis make up about 40% of Iran’s population, yet they are treated as second class citizens. Ethnic Azerbaijani women in Iran face double discrimination, both as women and Azerbaijanis. In their daily lives, they are fighting against both gender and ethnic apartheid.
It would behoove Western feminists to stand in solidarity with South Azerbaijani women seeking freedom from the mullahs’ regime.
The writer is the CEO of the Dona Gracia Center for Diplomacy and an Israel-based journalist. She is the author of Women and Jihad: Debating Palestinian Female Suicide Bombings in the American, Israeli and Arab Media.