Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎604r] (1210/1237)

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THIS DOCUMENT IS THE PROPERTY OF HIS BRITANNIC MAiCESTY’S .GOVERNMENT
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PERSIA.
CONFIDENTIAL.
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285
Section 2.
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Copy No.
Sir R. Bullard to Mr. Eden.—(Received December 23.)
(No. 197.) Tehran, December 2. 1941.
HIS Majesty’s representative presents his compliments to His Majesty’s
Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and has the honour to transmit
herewith a copy of despatch No. 48, dated the 17th November, 1941, from His
Majesty’s Consul at Tabriz, reporting on the interpjationjal situation at Tabriz.
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Enclosure.
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Sir,
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Consul Cook to Sir R. Bullard.
48. Confidential.)
Tabriz, November 17, 1941.
I HAVE the honour to inform you that nothing of importance has occurred
at Tabriz during the past week, except perhaps the local elections which were
well-known to be completely “ rigged ” and caused little or no excitement when
it was seen that the authorities did not intend to allow any new-fangled notions
of freedom or “ democratic ” movements to have their way.
2. Exactly the same seven Deputies as before were elected for' Tabriz, in
spite of the hopes of the demagogues, who accused the authorities of obtaining
votes by gifts of sugar (a precious article here these days). The Armenian
community says that it had a candidate brought down to Tabriz from the capital
by the Minister of the Interior, a companion of his in the ex-Shah’s political
prison until recently, and naturally they had to vote unanimously for him. As
soon as the Minister had left here for Rezaieh, however, on his tour of inspection,
an urgent telegram arrived from Tehran saying that on no account was this
protege of General Jahanbani’s to be elected. The electors who had already cast
their votes were nonplussed, but the Governor-General is reported to have said :
“ Give me the boxes and leave it to me/’ Hence the same representatives as
before.
3. The pan-Turk articles of M. Yalchin in the Yeni Sabah newspaper at
Istanbul caused some stir here, as might have been expected. The Minister of the
Interior was at the time in Rezaieh, the most potentially interested area, and
was somewhat short with the Turkish Consul-General here on his way back to
Tehran. While the newspapers in the capital had only one retort to make to the
exaggerated Turkish pretensions, the local journals took advantage of the incident
to say that Azerbaijan had its own local feelings in the matter and relied wholly
neither on Angora nor Tehran, both of whom were mistaken in considering this
province as their natural perquisite to bandy about without a thought for the
freedom and morale of its inhabitants. The Turks were told firmly, however,
that the existence of a Turkish dialect here had nothing to do with nationality
or sentiment; one may well imagine that their campaign (signs of which I have
reported to you for some time) risked offending their Persian neighbours in order
to give a warning to the Russian usurpers, in case the latter are thinking of
staying here indefinitely.
4. General Jahanbani passed through Tabriz very quickly on his return
to Tehran from a tour of Azerbaijan, and 1 was unable to see him again. He
seems to have found conditions reasonably normal at Khoi, Maku and Rezaieh,
where gendarmerie centres are now being re-established, but it is given out that at
Sanj Bulagh. the only Kurdish town on this route, he voluntarily dismissed his
official police and gendarme escort and stayed a night under the protection of his
Kurdish hosts—a gesture likely to appeal to them. The Russian general tells me
a very different story however, declaring that General Jahanbani was offered a
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