Azadistan

Azadistan or Azadestan (Persian: آزادیستان‎‎ Āzādestān meaning The Land of Freedom), was a short-lived state in the Iranian province of Azarbaijan that lasted from the early 1920 until September 1920. It was established by Mohammad Khiabani, representative to the parliament and a prominent dissident against foreign colonialism.^[1]

Shortly after the Russian Revolution of 1917, Khiabani re-established the Democrat Party of Tabriz after being banned for five years, and published the Tajaddod newspaper, the official organ of the party.

After the end of the World War I, in a protest to the 1919 Treaty between Persia and the United Kingdom, which exclusively transferred the rights of deciding about all military, financial, and customs affairs of Persia to the British, Khiabani disputed control of Tabriz with the central government of Vosough od-Dowleh in Tehran^[1] and in 1920, Khiabani proclaimed Azarbaijan to be Azadistan,^[1] to provide a model of freedom and democratic governance for the rest of Iran. He considered himself not a separatist.^[2]

Khiabani's movement was suppressed militarily in September, 1920. After the fall of Vosough od-Dowleh, the then prime minister, the new prime minister sent Mehdi Qoli Hedayat to Tabriz, giving him full authority, and he crushed and killed Khiabani in the late summer of 1920 and Azadistan was dissolved.

In fiction

• In the anime, Mobile Suit Gundam 00, Azadistan is a sovereign country located in the Middle East

See also

• Constitutional Revolution of Iran

References

1. 1 2 3 , AZERBAIJAN iv. Islamic History to 1941.
2. ↑ Cosroe Chaqueri, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920-1921: Birth of the Trauma (Pittsburgh and London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995), p. 465.