Tehran's authority has always attempted to impose itself on the "Kurdish, Balouch, and Arab" nations using "force" or "deception, propaganda, and soft war" and preventing them from thinking about their identity and following their rights and desires. Tehran's strategy for keeping the oppressed nations under control is assimilation. Accordingly, Tehran's authorities have tried to "fade away" Kurds by assimilating and melting them throughout history; for instance, they have tried to identify Kurds as an Iranian nation or an Iranian sub-state. They also define the Kurdish language as an Iranian dialect and they introduce the Kurdish events such as Newroz as Iranian events in international organizations.
In this article, we will look at some of the methods used by Tehran authorities to assimilate the Kurdish nation briefly.
Psychological Warfare
One of the mechanisms of assimilation and attempts to shrink the Kurdish nation is the psychological war that Persians in Iran and Turks in Turkey have implemented; for example, insulting, identifying Kurds as villagers and countrymen, illustrating them as an under-developed society and some illiterate people in the formal media and publications are only some of the psychological warfare they have applied against Kurds.
At the same time, Kurds are referred to as "border guards", "Sweet Kurds" and "Iranian Kurds" to compliment them while in fact, this is a way of deceiving Kurds with their soft war and their dominating policies. The result of this psychological war is that if the Kurdish people are not aware and conscious, they would be made to feel ashamed of their language and clothes so that they would reach a point where they would not speak their language or put on their clothes just to gain their oppressors' satisfaction and avoid being insulted! If the Kurdish individuals fall into such a trap, the oppressors have gained their goal, however, if the Kurdish people are aware, they will not let their oppressors succeed.
Migration and Transportation
Tens of thousands of Kurds have been forced to become Kolbar and they are killed or injured daily, yet the regime in Tehran does not let the economy develop in the Kurdish cities. It has been for decades now Kurds have to go to other provinces to be able to find a job and earn an income to provide their livelihood.
Severe economic pressure has forced some Kurds to leave their hometowns and migrate to other areas. This is another way that the regimes in Tehran have applied to make Kurds live in other provinces because in that case they will easily lose their identity and they will be assimilated within the other cultures. However, we can still see that even though the Kurds have been forced to abandon their lands and have migrated to Khorasan or Qazvin, they have still kept their identity and cultures or they are recovering their identity.
Developing Hopelessness
Another mechanism to assimilate the Kurds is to develop hopelessness among them. The hopeless nation will completely give up their revolutions and uprisings and they surrender to the oppressive authority. The Kurdish nation is a revolutionary and active society that has never surrendered to cruelty. The oppressors of the Kurdish nation have begun a long lasting and tiring psychological war against them. They kill Kurdish Kolbars and revolutionary activists every day, arrest and execute them, and keep the Kurds in poverty. This is a combination of "soft" and "hard" war.
Tehran's regime imprisons or executes Kurds daily systematically; thus, normalizing the killing of Kurds and imprisoning their people so that they could frighten them and make the Kurdistan society a dark community. Such a psychological war aims to spread hopelessness among them. Although the oppressive regime in Iran has done a lot to expand this war, we can see that some parts of Kurdistan (Kermashan and Ilam) that were aimed to be assimilated for years have regained and recovered their Kurdish identity gradually.
Imposing the Persian Language
One of the most important tools to melt down the Kurdish nation is imposing the Persian language. Iran's regime, having military weapons, authority, and media, has always tried to use these tools to shrink and destroy the Kurdish language. Insulting the Kurdish language is one of the most obvious mechanisms that they have been using to make Kurdish individuals feel ashamed to speak in their mother tongue. They even have used psychological techniques to make fun of and insult the Kurdish language, they have tried to destroy the Kurdish individual's personality so that they would not want to speak in their own language and assume if they speak Persian, they would look more civilized.
Despite all these, we can see that due to the powerful language that Kurdish is and its deep roots among the people, this language is getting even stronger every day. On the contrary, the Persian language has not been able to free itself from the hegemony of Arabic words despite all the money that is invested in the Persian Language Academy to keep this language alive and coin new words for it or borrow words from other languages to make it more powerful.
Finally, language is the most important part of the identity of every nation that if it is not protected, after some time the nations will lose their identity after their language, culture, and traditions change; such a nation will see itself within the dominant nation's frame while being melted and assimilated in them.
Conclusion:
Assimilation is a threatening weapon that the totalitarian regimes dominating Kurdistan have been using to melt down the Kurdish nation and every Kurdish individual must know where they are in this political gamble because when you, as a Kurdish individual, comprehend the way this war is being carried out then you will know how to play your role in the future which is defending your Kurdish identity in all its aspects.
