Adrian’s Reviews > The Great Game in West Asia: Iran, Turkey and the South Caucasus > Status Update

Fetullah Gulen , a sufi adept of nationalism and soft power promoted between the 90-2013 the expansion of turkish culture through international turkish schools. Together with Erdogan they disposed with mass arrests the Western Kemalist elites as well as the high ranking generals.
After 2010 with no common enemy they turned on each other , Erdogan basically destroying years of pro turkish sentiment in Middle East

Russia instead of using soft power by pouring money in target states , it pours money in target minority regions to keep them close should the need come to exert pressure on the target gonverment. It did and does so succesfully in Abkhazia and Ossetia in Georgia as well as North part of Azerbaijan on the Dagestani minority.

Besides Iran and Turkey
, Russia exerts both soft and hard power in Caucasus as well as former Ussr states.
In Georgia and Azerbaijan it funds separatists youth movements and makes use of the Orthodox church to promote anti LGBT propaganda thus impeding these states to get closer to Western values of liberty.
Armenia on the other hand is a penetrated system , and is totally dependent hosting military bases.

Basically:
Iran held both north and south Azerbaijan.
Russians occupied north and then left , and North became today Azerbaijan.
Now these dudes claim the south too while the south (iranian part) counters this saying North should rejoin Iran.
In time both Tehran and Baku understood that these tensions are not productive and either side annexing the other is futuristic and bilateral relations are more important.

Former IRGC commander rejects Azerbaijan Republic proposals to build a turkish academy in Iranian Azerbaijan.

Iranian azeris counter Azerbaijan claims of an United Azerbaijan (with the Iranian part) by proposing Azerbaijan join Iran like in the past during Persian Rule. Azeris can have a lot of more impact by joining Iran.
As a matter of fact the current supreme leader of Iran , Ali Khamenei is Azeri.

So azeris put aside their historical name which is Aran and name their country Azerbaijan (which is a different region to the south and much bigger belonging to Iran) so that they can later start spreading bullshit and irrendist slogans "United Azerbaijan" , "The southern issue" , pan turkism.
That is how you fabricate history.

There is the land of Aran(current republic of Azerbaijan) and Iranian Azerbaijan (north Iran)
Rep of Azerbaijan has always been part of Persia
1828 Russians take Aran
1918 Emerges the state of Azerbaijan
Iranian azeri dont get why their northern brothers do not use Aran for their new country.
Come 1990 and Rep of Azerbaijan pushes for "United Azerbaijan" , the two regions never having been a united nation

Quite unexpected that Baku is the one pushing irredentist agenda towards Iranian Azeris hoping to create tension and inoculate a view of "United Azerbaijan" even though the territory of Iranian Azerbaijan has never been part of the newer post soviet republic. If former gonverments were directly attacking Tehran , current Aliyev regime has toned down officialy and moved toward sneakyapproach (World Azerbaijani Forum)