Iran International
Masoud Pezeshkian's government is facing criticism for failing to support a motion that would have allowed limited ethnic literature courses in secondary schools. The Parliament rejected the motion on Wednesday.
President Pezeshkian speaks both Torki (a Turkic language spoken in northwestern Iran and several other provinces) and Kurdish, his parents' native languages. He has been one of the few officials to advocate for granting official status to ethnic languages under Article 15 of the Constitution. In 2016, he was elected chairman of a parliamentary faction consisting of Torki-speaking lawmakers, with approximately 100 of the 290 members of Parliament joining the group at the time.
However, during Wednesday's debate, Pezeshkian's government representative, Kazem Delkhosh, sided with lawmakers opposing the motion. Delkhosh argued that the proposed plan would create challenges for the educational system, including hiring specialized teachers, and could spark disputes in ethnically diverse regions.
The motion, put forward by the Parliament’s Education Committee, sought to introduce two hours of ethnic literature studies in secondary schools on an optional basis. The proposal was rejected by 130 lawmakers, with 104 voting in favor and five abstaining.
Supporters of the motion cited the Iranian Constitution, which designates Persian as the official language but also guarantees the right to use regional and tribal languages in the media and to teach literature in schools. However, opponents expressed concerns about national unity. Mohammad-Mehdi Shahriari, one of the lawmakers who spoke against the motion, warned that it could "threaten the country’s territorial integrity and national unity.”
Conversely, Alireza Novin, a lawmaker from Tabriz—the capital of East Azerbaijan Province and a majority-Torki-speaking city—strongly criticized the notion that promoting ethnic languages could deepen divisions or endanger national security. During a fiery speech in Parliament, he denounced the argument as baseless.
In an interview with the local news outlet Asr-e Tabriz, Novin further accused presidential candidates of making empty promises regarding the constitutional recognition of ethnic languages. He argued that Pezeshkian's administration, at the very least, should have refrained from opposing the motion.
Amir Karimzad, the managing director of another local media outlet, also took to X (formerly Twitter) to criticize the stance expressed by the government's representative in the Parliament. He claimed that Parliament's rejection of the plan reflected "extremists' fear of the power of ethnic groups."
The decision sparked widespread outrage on social media, with many non-Persian speakers and advocates for mother-tongue education expressing frustration over Parliament's refusal to allow even a limited form of ethnic literature instruction in schools.
The debate over the motion took place just days after the UN-designated International Mother Language Day. On February 21, activists in several Torki- and Kurdish-speaking cities marked the occasion by distributing children’s books and leaflets to raise awareness of the importance of native-language education.
Meanwhile, some others have reported the arrest of Mohammad Asadi in Maragheh for handing out books written in Torki to children. Reports also surfaced that security forces summoned the administrators of a private school in Tabriz after they organized a children’s musical performance featuring songs in Torki at a shopping mall on February 21. Social media users reported that authorities had warned the school against such activities.
Ethnic language activists in Iran are frequently accused of promoting separatism and often face prosecution or imprisonment. Advocates argue that the exclusive use of Persian in education erodes cultural heritage and disadvantages children who do not speak Persian fluently or at all when they begin school.
There are no official statistics on the number of speakers of ethnic languages in Iran. However, languages such as Torki, Kurdish, and Balochi are spoken by millions across the country.
“These people claimed to be seminarians, but after Mahsa Amini’s case, they poured into the streets armed with knives and machetes, confronting the people,” Mohammad Ashrafi Esfahani told the Tehran-based Didban News website.
“They would return in bloodied clothes and then dress as clerics again," he added in the Tuesday interview.
Ashrafi Esfahani said individuals linked to prominent cleric Alireza Panahian were involved in violent crackdowns on protesters.
“Has there ever been a precedent in Shia history for a seminarian to wield a machete and attack people? Yet, Panahian’s group did exactly that,” he said of the violence following the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini.
The young woman died at the custody of morality police, sparking the national Woman, Life, Freedom movement.
His comments come amid a broader power struggle between clerical factions, with Ashrafi Esfahani accusing Panahian’s followers of attempting to seize control of religious institutions for financial and political gain.
“We filed a complaint and reported this to the authorities,” he said. “But it is still unclear who is supporting these individuals.”