Persians and Turks are not Arabs - Language.

In Iran, the people who speak Farsi, or Persian, are an Indo-Iranian (Indo-European) language written in Arabic (a Semitic language) since the 9th century, although its alphabet includes 4 additional letters, making a total of 32. In ancient times, Persian, or Avestan, was written with cuneiform characters; Middle Persian, or Pahlavi, used Aramaic, and modern Persian retains many Arabic words, but they are two quite different languages. The second most widely spoken language is Azerbaijani, of Turkish origin, and other minority languages are Kurmanji, used by the Kurds, Arabic, Lurianic, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew, and Turkmen.

It is very interesting how Persia managed to preserve its language, identity and traditions against the invaders. The Book of Kings or Shahnameh, an epic poem by Ferdowsi written entirely in Persian, is considered to have been the saviour of the language and what allowed it to be preserved until today. It is equally curious how festivals inherited from Zoroastrianism such as the Persian New Year at the beginning of spring (Nowruz), Yalda Night at the winter solstice or Chaharshanbe Suri, where it is a tradition to light bonfires in the streets and jump over the flames, are still celebrated with great fervour today.

Modern Turkish is spoken in Turkey, which comes from the Turkic language family and has been written in the Latin alphabet since 1928, years after the foundation of the Republic of Turkey. Both have many words in common, as since the Turks adopted Islam they borrowed many terms from Arabic and Persian (it is believed that up to 85%) and Ottoman Turkish, used between the 14th and 20th centuries as the language of government and the court and written in Arabic characters, was a mixture of the three. In fact, the Ottoman sultans were great patrons of Persian art and literature, especially in the 16th century, the golden age of the Empire under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. The language currently used in the country comes from the Turkish spoken by the people and has fewer borrowed words but still many in common.

There are written records of the ancient use of the Hattic language on cuneiform tablets, as well as texts in Hurrian and Urartian and inscriptions in Lemnian, a language related to Etruscan. Before Turkish, Assyrian, Hittite, Palaic, Luwian, Phrygian, Greek, Latin and Armenian were also spoken in Anatolia. Today, Kurmanji, the Kurdish language, is the second most widely spoken language in the country, followed by minority languages: Arabic, Zazaki, Laz, Armenian, Greek, Ladino or Judeo-Spanish, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Georgian, Albanian, Bosnian, Aramaic, Pomak, Coptic, etc.

With these general ideas, which I will discuss in more detail later, I simply want to show you the enormous cultural richness and complexity of these two countries and perhaps you will be able to understand why they arouse so much interest and curiosity in me.