Iran and its Turkish Question

This paper will look at the way in which Iranian nationalists at the beginning of the 20th century sought to manage the transition of Iran from and imperial state of diverse minorities into a national state, substituting loyalty to a dynasty to that of a unifying national idea. Fundamental to this project was the means by which the large Turkic minority, one that had been integral to the integrity of the imperial state, could be integrated into an new inclusive national idea; a problem made all the more acute by the rise of Turkish nationalism in the newly founded Turkish Republic. The solution it will be argued, was not to be found in the centralising experience of the French state but by the more pluralistic model offered by the British state and which by extension drew on the intellectual legacy of the British-American Enlightenment experience.