State of Yarin
State of Yarin ਯਰਿਨ ਉਲੁਸ Yarin Ulus (Yarin) | |
|---|---|
 Flag | |
| Motto: Agzybirlik yamanlykdan üstün çykyar "Unity prevails over evil" | |
 The State of Yarin (in green) within the Medius Sea. | |
| Capital and largest city | Kherbent |
| Official languages | Yarin |
| Demonym | Yarinite |
| Government | Parliamentary respublic |
| Kirish Kyn | |
| Girghi Jigit | |
| History | |
• Ousting of Guch II and establishment of the State | 13 Nollonger 1862 |
| Area | |
• Total | 29,459 km2 (11,374 sq mi) (106th) |
| Population | |
• Estimate | 5,553,022 |
• Density | 188.5/km2 (488.2/sq mi) |
| Currency | Täç (YRT) |
| Time zone | Western Median Time (IAT-M - 2) |
The State of Yarin (Yarin ਯਰਿਨ ਉਲੁਸ Yarin Ulus, Hártal Րիքի Յարին Ríki Yarin) is an independent state located in the western Medius Sea, in the Adour archipelago of the Median Islands; it shares the island of Yarin from which it takes its name with the Siursk commonhold of Skógarey (the latter also being the name by which Siurskeyti refers to the island in its entirety), which occupies most of the north-eastern quadrant of the island and which gives the State its only land border. The State also controls the island of Shibiyet to the south-east, as well as a number of smaller islands in the vicinity; a maritime border with the Savamese overseas territory of Doreysne exists along the Lecosis Strait. Its capital is located at Kherbent on the southern coast of the island of Yarin.
For much of its history prior to gaining independence in 1626 the island of Yarin was a dependency, and later a province, of Tisceron on the Lestrian mainland, and it remained under some strong influence from Tisceron for a long period after the liberation. However, the increasing significance of shipping from Messenian states in the Medius from the later 18th century drew the State more closely into the sphere of influence of the continent; and in the 20th century the influence of Savam and the State’s long and difficult relationship with Siurskeyti has seen Quesailles build some significant ties with the islanders.
Etymology
The country takes its name from the island which comprises most of its territory, and Yarin is frequently used interchangeably for both in casual usage. The name Yarin is thought to be derived from a proto-Saganic yạrïn, meaning “morning” or possibly “sunrise”, probably referring to its easterly position, cognate of modern Sularin yarın, “tomorrow”.
History
Darkness before the dawn: pre-modern history
Human habitation on Yarin dates back almost four thousand years; and the island was a centre of the Dranganes culture and, later, a part of the Serrinean-based Bastani Kingdom, before falling under the influence of the Sirian High Lamneary of Tisceron in the later eighth century CE and eventually being annexed by them in 810 CE.
Control over the island by the Tisceronites was often weak and frequently challenged, although the Yarinites fought as much among themselves as against their Lestrian overlords; and the loss of Skógarey – sold to the commonhold of Vonskil in 1508 – weakened that hold further. However, it would not be until 1606 that a cohesive effort against the Tisceronites was strong enough to drive them out completely. The first Kingdom of Yarin lasted less than two years before a brief alliance of convenience between Tisceron and Vonskil brought it down; but Qet’s vehemence in prosecuting the peace and seeking to forcibly suppress the island’s majority Bhramavadin population succeeded only in reigniting the fires, with a second rebellion in 1626 making the break permanent. Before the end of the 17th century the kingdom had expanded further, forming a union with the smaller neighbouring kingdom of Shibiyet on the island of that name.
Independence did not necessarily bring prosperity, and at various times the Kingdom saw drains of population into Skógarey where the Yarinites could do better economically, even if they were still disparaged by local Siur rulers. However, continuing rivalry between the new state of Siurskeyti and the Savamese saw the northerners make diplomatic overtures to the rulership in Kherbent; Savamese support was an important factor in lifting the standard of living for the average Yarinite, and, to an extent, in strengthening domestic political institutions.
Creation: kingdom to state
For all this, though, the kingdom still stood at a marked disadvantage in economic terms, certainly in comparison to Siursk Skógarey and Savamese Doreysne; and failure of harvests over the period from 1860 to 1862 caused widespread instances of famine, and frequent outbreaks of rioting in Kherbent, Gurgan on the north coast, and other large towns. The apparent inability of king Guch II and his advisers to address this rolling catastrophe only made matters worse; Guch, then in his late sixties, was widely seen as being under the thumb of his much younger wife Küdere, and seemed at times to be actively disinterested in taking any action which would stretch beyond the gates of his palace. In Nollonger 1862 an alliance of political and military leaders, their tolerance now stretched to the breaking point, moved to remove Guch and most of those in government and the palace who remained loyal to him. Dayanch Ayaq, a former chief advisor to the king who had fallen foul of the capricious Küdere and had been barred from the palace, was a key figure in the coup which established the State of Yarin, and became its first chief executive, taking the title of “First Citizen” (Ilkit); Guch, with his wife having abandoned him during, or possibly before, his flight (she later re-emerged in Tisceron, where she had family), spent the remaining twenty years of his life in impotent exile in Tire.
The fall of the kingdom was received well, if cautiously, in Savam and Siurskeyti, which by this time were Yarin’s principal trading partners; the leadership of both countries had been concerned for some time over Guch’s increasing instability and indolence, and welcomed Ayaq’s takeover as a much-needed circuit-breaker. For his part, Ayaq was very much conscious of his country’s status as the only remaining independent state in the Median Islands group, and actively cultivated good relations with both of the Messenian states; indeed, to some extent he was able to play them off against each other as they jockeyed for position and influence in the region.
Domestically, he was very clear that his office as First Citizen meant entirely that – first among equals – and he encouraged collaboration and consensus at all levels of society (and especially within his government). While this made for slow decision-making at times – one Savamese diplomat nicknamed him la tortue, “the tortoise”, for this tendency towards deliberation – it also fostered a move towards greater stability in a country that had often lacked for it. Ayaq served as First Citizen for two seven-year terms – the maximum allowed by the constitution which he and his cohort had put in place – and would almost certainly have been granted a third in 1876 had he sought to overturn those provisions. He refused to do so, stating in his final address to his people that “we fought once to rid ourselves of a bad king; we must never again allow ourselves to be the servants of even a good king.”1
Truth and acceptance: Yarin descendant
Ayaq had envisaged the Diňleýer, the new State’s parliament, as a place in which men of sagacity and good will could harness change to step closer to the truth of the world. To some extent that mantle was taken up by the Altybarmaklar or “Hexadists”, who drew more firmly on the tattvas in forming a distinctly Bhramavadic political philosophy; but high-minded ideals struggled to win a footing against low-spirited cunning and a willingness to accommodate more self-serving manifestations of change. By the beginning of the 20th century Yarin’s small-scale nobility and any sense of noblesse oblige had largely given way to a form of crony mercantilism that felt little responsibility for the sensibilities of the masses.
Growing grievance from the public provided fertile ground for change. Tolga Dagin borrowed from the Hexadist playbook but imparted a much more personal and populist spin to its ideas. He was probably the first Yarinite politician to seriously court the masses in a bid for power, and he was very much the first to pull the force of the country’s media behind him. Upending the usual backroom bargaining over the First Citizenship, Dagin ran a barnstorming campaign in 1925 under the slogan Yarin birinji, Yarin mydamy (“Yarin first, Yarin always”) to rally popular opinion and brush aside the ineffectual Gol Bashburun in his bid for re-election.
Dagin played shamelessly to the gallery, taking some cues from the emergent Aydin Revolution in Busar later in his first term. He stoked up sentiment against Siurskeyti, with his rhetoric denying the Siursk right to a presence in Skógarey. He leaned harder into outright autocracy as his first term progressed, and he is thought to have manipulated his re-election in 1932. Siursk protests were gleefully – and at times abusively – refuted; and Ostari’s anger prompted tight border controls and other restrictions on trade with Yarin. For an outraged Dagin, his own words and his enraged people triumphed over fears of Siursk firepower as he declared war on Siurskeyti in Sation 1934.
The “Yarin War”, as it has sometimes been grandiosely styled, lasted only six weeks and woefully humiliated a greatly outmatched Yarinite army, with Dagin suing for peace after a Siursk naval bombardment of Kherbent in Ediface. A statewide election, organised in Metrial 1935 under neutral Savamese supervision – the first-ever poll of the public for a First Citizen – finally loosened Dagin’s grip on the office, with the Bhramavadin cleric Akylly Güpür winning convincingly in a run-off.
Agents of change: the middle 20th century
After the bombast and freneticism of the Dagin years, the new regime came as a sharp and astringent dose of common sense. Güpür was inclined by his background towards Hexadism, but he tended not to push its maxims too far and strove to position the State as restrained but open-minded and co-operative where there was benefit to be gained. In the interordinate arena, while Yarin probably continued to lean on Savam for support, the country’s relations with Zeppengeran also advanced substantially in this period, with the Henver government seeking to outflank Siurskeyti in the “Straits Game” period. While dealings with the Siursk became more cordial – at least to the extent that, as Güpür put it in one address, they “did not play their music too loudly and kept their fences in good repair” – the more pragmatic and flexible attitudes in Henver and Quesailles sat better in the south.
While Güpür’s commitment to the responsibilities of the First Citizen could not be faulted, he regarded his election in some senses as a stop-gap measure forced on the country by the Dagin anomaly, and he insisted on relinquishing the office in 1939 in order to restore Ayaq’s seven-year mandate – although he held the respect of the Diňleýer enough that he would almost certainly be re-elected had he changed his mind. Instead, the new election – restored to the hands of the parliamentarians – saw a rare instance of the Second Citizen, the head of government, being chosen.
Taýyn Bola was very much in the same mould, however, navigating some tense interordinate currents in the 1940s and earning a reputation for fair dealing and honesty which recommended him to all sides. His efforts to mean Yarin-Siursk mistrust alongside Trúmann Höstugur, who succeeded his mother Linna as thein of Skógarey in 1942, were perhaps the biggest fruits of his labours; stand-out examples here are the displays of cross-border co-operation in two local crises: intense and rapidly-spreading forest fires around the border during the dry summer of 1943, and rescue and evacuation efforts around the Asmandat volcano on the island’s west coast in Ediface 1944. On a larger scale can be added Bola’s visit to Vallhæra to attend a memorial ceremony on the tenth anniversary of the Yarin War in 1944, here he called for a greater recognition that both Arlaturi and Bhramavadin saw the search for the truth as the most noble aim of man, and that this search could only be shortened by them working together. The address – remembered today as “is there in truth no beauty?” from a line within it – has since been widely re-echoed in Hexadist dealings with the Siur, particularly in parts of Adorac.
For all the turbulence of interordinate conflict around them during the Long War, however, the State of Yarin remained largely a spectator to much of it. Perhaps the most serious bout of dissent to strike it in this period was in the form of rouser activity in 1953 and 1954; probably inspired by parallel developments in Tire and surrounding parts of the Serrinean peninsula, this was quelled fairly readily by the State’s army.
Savam’s relations with Yarin remained strong enough after the war that the island played a significant part in supporting the Quesailles government during the social disorders and widespread food shortages of the climatic disruption years. However, during the early 1970s, Zeppengeran began to pay closer attention to Yarin as the Straits Game revived and its concerns over Siursk activity and interest in the Medius enlarged; Henver’s breach with Savam during the so-called “Mésentente” period probably accelerated this. Yarin, which had largely remained unaligned during the Long War, agreed a mutual-aid statement which, if perhaps a little short of actual alliance, allowed for increased co-operation between the two countries’ militaries. This included an extended war-game exercise off Shibiyet in late 1975, which probably allowed the Zepnish forces to fine-tune the amphibious assault techniques used in Mirrey in the following year.
Althiugh relations between Savam and Zeppengeran improved from the early 1980s, this probably did not reflect that much on Yarin’s position, which has largely remained turned to Henver in the subsequent years. Several First Ministers have expressed concerns over Savamese “belligerence” during Quesailles’ campaigns in northern Joriscia in recent years, and the Kherbent government protested to Savam over substantial upgrading of facilities at the Île des Jardins naval base on Doreysne during 1994 and 1995.
The power dynamic in the relationship has been called into question by some Messenian observers. Yarin was one of the first countries to give diplomatic recognition to the new Zepnish regime after the Ten Long Days of Floridy 1981, and Chykmak Gyrgy made his good relationship with the members of the new government a key element of his campaign to become First Citizen later in the same year.
While Gyrgy could not go so far as to copy the approach of the New Alignment Society in its entirety, he was able to begin a swing towards greater uniformity of outlook in the Diňleýer in the same mould as the Society. This new paradigm did not receive a formal name, although newspaper reports coined the term “Home of Yarin” (yarinliriň öýi) and this seems to have been informally adopted. Gyrgy’s successors to the office have been very much in the same mould – to the extent that there were audible claims that the withdrawal of the strongly-favoured Okuz Ashan from a challenge for the office of First Citizen in 2002 was supported, if not actually engineered, by Yarinite and Zepnish political and business interests who were uneasy over his cooler stance on relations with Henver and a more positive view towards Siurskeyti. This was refuted by Yuz Torokly, who eventually won the office with little credible opposition. Perhaps only in the aftermath of Kirish Kyn’s election in 2016 did a handful of dissenting voices become audible in the parliament.
Government and administration
The State of Yarin is ruled by a First Citizen (Ilkit), who acts as head of state, with a Second Citizen (Uly) as head of government.2 Unusually for a respublic, he is not elected to the position by way of a statewide ballot; rather, the electorate chooses members for the Diňleýer, the parliament of Yarin (to a maximum term of five years), and its membership then appoints one of its number to fill the office of First Citizen when that office falls vacant. A First Citizen may have a maximum of two seven-year terms (these need not be consecutive); a member of parliament so elected forfeits his seat while serving as First Citizen, but he has the option of taking up the unexpired balance of his elected term should he choose to do so. It is not essential for the Second Citizen to become First Citizen when the position falls open; indeed, for most of the State’s existence such a succession has not happened.
The largely Bhramavadin State still retains a markedly Sirian administrative structure as a legacy from centuries of Tisceronite rule, with the lowest level of governance based on the taparate structure familiar in many parts of the Sirian theosphere. More than 300 individual taparates are grouped into fifteen provinces (iller, singular il) at the secondary level.
Religion
The island’s long history has bequeathed to the State of Yarin a complex intermixture of faiths, with consequences for its government and administration. Its predominant faith is the Bhramavada originally brought to the island from Serrinea, and professed Bhramavadi make up almost three-quarters of the population; however, the legacy of Tisceronite possession is felt in the presence of a sizeable Sirian minority, presently around 20% by number. Most Sirian Yarinites adhere to the Coseptran Compact, with the Lamneary of Yarin having severed its ties to the High Lamneary of Tisceron and, through it, the Sophoran Compact during the island’s fight for independence in the 17th century. A small number of Arlaturi, mostly along the border with Skógarey, and a smaller number professing other faiths or no faith make up the remainder.