International Talysh Foundation

Preserving the past, protecting the present, creating the future

The Talysh people have long been compactly settled on the south-west coast of the Caspian Sea on both sides of the Iran-Azerbaijan border and are one of the indigenous peoples of both the South Caucasus and West Asia. The Talysh speak one of the unique Iranian languages, the earliest forms of which, until recent centuries, were spread over much larger areas of West Asia.

However, over the last centuries the Talysh people have faced assimilation, which is only intensifying today with the lack of official status as well as education and media in the Talysh language, restrictions on Talysh studies and persecution of Talysh activists, researchers and politicians.

"Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger" labelled Talysh as one of the "vulnerable" languages. The absence, restriction and actual prohibition of programmes to monitor and protect the Talysh language leads to the fact that the number of its speakers is gradually decreasing.

In addition, the absence of programmes to collect Talysh folklore, study Talysh customs and traditions and disseminate the information collected leads to the fact that the Talysh culture is disappearing without a trace. The Talysh are deprived of the opportunity to create and strengthen their national institutions, develop their culture and traditions. The Talysh people today are deprived of the right to preserve and protect the environment and cannot "determine priorities and develop strategies for the development or use of their lands or territories and other resources", as required by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The Talysh people, who have lived for millennia side by side with the nature of the Talysh Mountains and the Talysh Lowlands, have no control today over developments affecting their lands, nor over the use of the resources within their territory. A significant part of the Talysh are forced to leave their lands for socio-economic reasons in search of a better life, thus losing touch with their homeland.

Back in the XIX century, as a result of the Russian-Iranian wars of 1804-1813 and 1826-1828, the territory of residence of the Talysh people - Talyshistan - was divided into two parts between the warring parties. To this day, the Talysh remain divided nation, unable to define and implement sustainable development goals.

Facing the threat of extinction of the Talysh people, we, as their representatives, have set ourselves the goal of preserving our people, our culture and language, protecting and preserving our identity by all civilised and legal means available to us. To achieve this goal, we have established the International Talysh Foundation (ITF).

ITF initiates and supports various cultural, research, educational, social, political, ecological and infrastructural projects with the aim of preserving, studying, popularising and developing the historical and cultural heritage of the Talysh people and their language, sustainable socio-political, economic and ecological development of Talyshistan, promotes the production and distribution of media related to the Talysh people, as well as projects for protecting the rights of the Talysh people and their representatives around the world.

The International Talysh Foundation is a non-profit organisation that exists on funds from voluntary and charitable donations from individuals and legal entities. We appreciate any support you are ready to give us in our activities: material, financial and voluntary.

We are grateful that you are not indifferent to the fate of the Talysh people, because the preservation of each nation, each language and each culture is the preservation of our world in all its cultural diversity! Helping others and each other, we invest in our future and a new, better world, where the rights of every person and every nation are respected. Together we can preserve the past, protect the present and create the future for the Talysh people!