Abbas Khodayari, a civil activist from Azerbaijan, was arrested by intelligence agency forces for distributing books in Turkish language among the people.
According to the Campaign for the Defense of Political and Civil Prisoners, on Friday, September 21st, 2018, Abbas Khodayari, a civil activist and resident of Khalkhal, was arrested by the Information Office agents, while distributing Turkish books between the people of Hashjin and Khalkhal and handed over to Khalkhal Information Office.
According to an informed source talking to Campaign: “These books were all licensed to print and published in the country’s publications.”
It is worth mentioning that Abbas Khodayari was arrested by security guards on July 5th, 2018, on the eve of the annual gathering of the Babak castle and continued mass arrests in the Azerbaijani region.
Between 16% and 25% of Iran’s population are speaking Turkish and most of them live in the provinces of East and West Azerbaijan, Ardebil and Zanjan. Some of these citizens consider the treatment of Turkish speaking citizens as discriminatory, and the prohibition of teaching non-Persian languages in schools is one of the most prominent cases of discrimination, which has always been the subject of protest by some of the civil activists in these areas.