Armenian says Yezidi's are not kurds

[Vladimir]

AN INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR GARNIK ASATRIAN

Armenian News Network / Groong
June 8, 1998
By Onnik Krikorian

Professor Garnik Asatrian is the Head of the Faculty of Iranian
Studies at Yerevan State University. Born in Tehran in 1953, he moved
to Yerevan in 1968. He has been prolific in his research into Kurdish
tribal and linguistic tradition, and instrumental in the establishment
of contemporary Kurdish academic study.

He is Head of the newly founded Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies,
and is editor of the publication "Acta Kurdica".

This interview was conducted by Onnik Krikorian during research
undertaken in June for the Kurdish Human Rights Project investigating
the situation of the Yezidi minority within the Republic of Armenia.

As such, it forms part of a series of interviews with Yezidi, Kurdish
and Armenian representatives. A report on the situation of minorities
within the Republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, with a focus on the
Kurds, will be published this year by the Kurdish Human Rights
Project.


OK: You are very prolific, it is said, in the study of the Yezidi
as a separate ethnic and national identity. It is also said that the
debate over the Yezidi ethnic identity is a political one.

GA: The Kurdish-Yezidi problem over recent years has acquired a
political connotation, not only in Armenia but amongst the widespread
Kurdish diaspora. Some Kurds think that the problem is initiated by
the Armenians. That it is not right, that it is not true, because
Armenians have no interest in this problem. Whether they are Kurds or
Yezidi doesn't matter for us, or for the national interests of
Armenia.

As you know the Yezidi problem always existed from the beginning of
this ethno-confessional group - from the early 16th century onwards -
because the formation of a Yezidi religion, a Yezid confession, a
Yezidi ethnic group can be dated from the 13th century. The Yezidi can
be originated from the 13th century. So, the Yezidis have always been
the subject of persecution on behalf of the Kurds first of all, and
they have a deep hatred towards the Kurds.

Although they speak Kurdish - Kurmanji - they do not consider
themselves as Kurds, so this is the problem. During the Soviet period,
during the process of the unification of all nations, of course Yezidi
were considered as Kurds. The Yezidi clergy was persecuted by the
state, not the Armenian state but the Soviet state, as the bearers of
religious tradition. Most of them were shot, and those that survived
were placed in Stalin's camps. So, in 1988 during the resurrection
of Armenia, it was also very natural that the Yezidi regained their
national identity, and their religion. This was the main reason for
the emergence of the Yezidi movement, not because of the Armenian
Government or Government officials.



OK: But there are Yezidi who consider themselves Yezidi-Kurd and
accuse the Armenian Government of trying to promote a separate Yezidi
identity.

GA: Yes, some. Among the Yezidi there are those that do have Kurdish
ties, but not all Yezidi. To be part of the Yezidi or Kurdish nation
is just as much part of an individual's personal ambition. So, it
is very natural for some Yezidi, but I am talking about the Yezidi as
a whole, and not some individuals, for example Karlene Chachani.



OK: I met with a Yezidi family yesterday that bear out much of what
you say, but there are still some confusing contradictions. For example,
although you say that Yezidi are not Kurds, many Yezidi in Armenia,
and despite the expulsion of most of Armenia's Moslem Kurds, consider
"Riya Taza", a Kurdish newspaper with a Yezidi editor, their
newspaper. Also, Kurdish academics have suggested that there is an
Armenian nationalist movement that has attempted to supress the Yezidi
Kurdish identity - for example, Mehrdad Izady in "Kurdish Life" has
accused some Armenian nationalist newspapers of printing racist
articles regarding the Kurds and the Yezidi-Kurdish identity.

GA: Mehrdad Izady is a stupid man, a very stupid man. He is a
Professor at the University of Harvard, and I wonder why Harvard has
Professors such as he. For example, he could not even be a mere
teacher here in Armenia, even teaching children. It's amazing, it's
amazing, it's very amazing.



OK: Articles written by a US-based Armenian journalist suggest
however, that there is a link between the promotion of a separate
Yezidi identity and the amount of money made available to promote
separate Yezidi newspapers and culture at a time when newspapers such
as "Riya Taza" were facing financial difficulty.

GA: Do you know what is amazing for me, and I wonder as an Armenian,
is how you can explain the very focused interest of political and non-
political non governmental organisations in the Yezidi problem in
Armenia. All of them are trying to represent the 50,000 Yezidi as
Kurds. What is the interest of these organisations?



OK: I do not believe that this is the interest of NGOs in the
West. However, there are very obviously political groups in the west
who see the Kurdish movement as a medium for whatever political
interests, and the Yezidi are part of that political interest.
However, the Yezidi can be seen to be an appropiate focus for any
study of the situation of minorities within the Republic of Armenia,
and that is why I am here, and why the issue of the Yezidi national
and ethnic identity needs to be addressed.

GA: Minorities within Armenia are living very well, and you can see
that every minority, even the Yezidi, and even the Kurds, are living
very well here.



OK: However, in last year's US State Department report on human
rights practices in Armenia it did state that there were cases of
discrimination against Yezidi.

GA: There is not any discrimination against Yezidi. You know where
this rumour comes from? It comes from Germany and other countries
because some of those Yezidi that left Armenia for the west found that
European governments did not want to give refugee status to these
people. The only people that can get refugee status are those that
have experienced political persecution, and so this allegation was
made in order to get refugee status. Even Armenians.

For example, I have some acquaintances here that disliked
Dashnaktsutiune who came to me two years ago. This was during a very
dark period of Levon Ter-Petrossian's regime two or three years ago
when Dashnaktsutiune was banned. But they wanted to join
Dashnaktsutiune so that they could get refugee status in the west, and
this is the same problem with the Yezidi.

I read a report in Belgium that suggested that every Yezidi in Armenia
has undergone persecution for speaking Kurdish, and that even some of
them were killed in the streets. We sent a Yezidi to the west to show
the real situation of the Yezidi in Armenia. There is not any
discrimination in Armenia. I know of course what the real reason is
for the interest in the Yezidi.



OK: And what is that?

GA: To include Armenia in the list of countries with a Kurdish
problem. Having a Yezidi minority, Armenia can not be home to bases
for the PKK, and a home for Kurdish guerillas. But if Armenia has a
Kurdish minority, and it does not matter if they are only 50,000, then
some of Armenia is part of Kurdistan, along with Iran, Iraq, Syria,
and Turkey. This is very primitive and superficial. You can very
easily detect the real reasons for the interest in the Armenian
Yezidi.

The [former] American Ambassador, Gilmore, on many occasions visited
Yezidi villages. He wanted to insist on the Kurdish identity of the
Yezidi. He even held a seminar on the Yezidi. It has a mostly
political basis - nothing to do with human rights. There is even a
speciality called "fact-finding". They teach people to identify human
rights violations, but I can show you where human rights violations
occur. Saudia Arabia for example - they cut off people's hands - and
Africa, so its amazing. We are laughing at this attitude towards
Armenia. Yezidi are citizens of Armenia, they are not Kurds, and you
can visit Yezidi inhabited villages.



OK: How many [Moslem] Kurds are left in Armenia

GA: About 100.



OK: 100 people? Someone told me around 2-5,000. Are they wrong?

GA: They are quite wrong. That is the problem, Mr. Krikorian.



OK: I would agree with you with regards to certain "fact-finding"
missions, and there is no doubt that the best report on human rights
violations in a specific country is one that simply states that there
are no problems. However, there are reports and allegations that have
to be looked into. For example, that there is an attempt to redefine
the identity of those Yezidi that consider themselves to be Kurdish.

GA: I have to specify a very important point. When you say that some

of them are of Kurdish origin, or not of Kurdish origin, you have to
specify the notion of "Kurd". The term "Kurd" only goes back to the
first decades of the 20th century as a common denomination of a nation.
We can not speak of Kurds and Kurdish people - it is wrong, quite
wrong. It was only developed in the political circles of Germany and
England. For example the Kurmanji of Western Armenia, or as they say,
Turkish Kurdistan, are Kurmanjis - they have not a genuine Kurdish
identity. When you visit a Kurdish village in say, Erzerum, and you
ask if they are Kurd, they answer with a tribal identity, not a
national identity.



OK: There is a tribal identity, I agree, but I travelled in south east
Turkey last year, around Diyarbakir, Elazig and Bingol, and there did
seem to be a splintering of the Kurdish groups. However, they all
considered themselves to be Kurdish. Even those that were pro-Turkish
said that they spoke Kurdish, not Kurmanji. I know it is the same
language, but they used the term "Kurdish", and as an Iranian
Armenian you will have an opposing opinion on this, but they all
considered Newroz to be a Kurdish festival, whether they supported the
Kurdish movement or not.

GA: Of course, it was an exaggeration, but through the radio, the mass
media, they can now identify themselves as Kurds. The question of
national identity is dependent on future national development, and
this also applies to the Yezidi. Some Yezidi consider themselves
Kurdish exclusively because of the fact that to belong to a nation
fighting for its independence is more attractive. That is why some
Yezidi intellectuals consider themselves Kurds.

You can not talk about a unified Kurdish nation, but you can at least
talk about Kurdish people. You can not consider the Kurds of Iran and
compare them with the Kurmanjis. They are quite a different people -
they can not even understand each other. They have quite a different
confessional attitude. Ethnically and linguistically they are quite
different although they are also called Kurd. Yezidis are a small
ethno-confessional group, Kurdish speaking. "Ethno-confessional
group" - this is the right term for applying to the Yezidis. But
you are going to publish this?



OK: I have been commissioned to write a report on the situation of
minorites within the Republic of Armenia, with a focus on the largest
minority - the Yezidi. As part of this I have to examine and
investigate accusations and allegations of human rights violations,
although as I have stated the best report I could hope to write is
that there are no human rights violations at all.

GA: You are not a "fact-finding" person?



OK: I am not a "fact-finding" person, although facts are very
important. Without facts you can not substantiate, and at the same
time another journalist is in Azerbaijan undertaking similar research
to see if the governments of the caucasus region are living up to
their international treaty obligations.

GA: In Azerbaijan you can find lots of facts.



OK: So, "fact-finding" is okay in Azerbaijan?

GA: Nothing is okay, but you will find lots of facts. For example, in
Azerbaijan in the first decades of Soviet power there were 45,000
Kurds, but now you can not find any Kurds in Azerbaijan. This is the
great fact. The Azerbaijani Government does not count its minorities -
everyone is considered Azerbaijani.



OK: One problem that all of the Yezidi on both sides have pointed out
is that they do not have any representation in Parliament.

GA: Since the formation of the new Armenian Government I have written
articles insisting that every minority has representatives in the
Armenian Parliament relative to their population. We are passing a new
law concerning parliamentary elections, and in our projects that we
have, all minorities in Armenia will have a representative in the
Armenian Parliament. It will be wonderful, and it is so far the
greatest shortcoming that we have with regards to the national
minorities in Armenia. I agree with you, it is important, and I think
we will overcome this difficulty.



OK: Kocharian has already placed great importance on the situation of
minorities within Armenia, and I presume from what you have said so
far that there are no problems whatsoever.

GA: Of course, it is not true to categorically state that there are no
problems concerning minorities.There are some local incidents in
villages, in mixed-populations, but they do not have national connotations.
The first problem is that of representation in Parliament, and the regime
of Ter Petrossian was a criminal regime. It was based upon banditry
and acquiring money. I am not speaking as a Dashnak, I am speaking as
an Armenian.

The next problem concerns schools, but it is very difficult because
the Yezidi language is not a language of literature. It is technically
impossible to teach all disciplines in the Yezidi language, in
Kurmanji. Even in Persian it is very difficult, because these
languages do not have a long-standing academic tradition. If the
Yezidi or the Kurds make their country they can achieve this step by
step, maybe in fifty years, but probably it will take a century until
Yezidi schools and universities can teach all disciplines in their own
language.



OK: Am I right in thinking that individuals such as Aziz Tamoyan
has initiated the re-adoption of a unique Yezidi alphabet?

GA: During the first years of Soviet power, the Yezidi used the
Armenian alphabet, but then adopted cyrillic, until even now. Some
Yezidi claim that there is an ancient Yezidi alphabet, but it is an
ambitious statement. They had cryptograms for Yezidi sacred books.


© Copyright 1998 Onnik Krikorian. All rights reserved.
Unauthorised reproduction prohibited.

--
Onnik Krikorian is a photojournalist, journalist and communications
consultant in London. He has travelled to Turkey to cover stories on
media censorship and human rights abuses for 'The Scotsman on
Saturday', "New Internationalist', and 'The Journalist' magazines. He
may be contacted at mailto:onnik@clicks.co.uk. His Photographs of the Kurds
and Yezidi in Turkey and Armenia are available directly, or through
the London-based Panos Pictures photo agency.

[Vladimir]

Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies also did research into Zaza-Kurds and said they are not Kurds? Strange hmm..?

[Gudea]

lol, I once wanted to post this article but when saw it is copyrighted forgot it.

[Gudea]

Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies also did research into Zaza-Kurds and said they are not Kurds? Strange hmm..?

lol, he even says Farsi is not as comperehnsive as armenian is, this is while much of foreign loanwords of armenian come from farsi and even from Kurdish.

This Garnink is so stupid that whole of his article is nonsense and insult. it is very very clear that he speaks from a political-racist point of view. he is related to Dashnak which by itself is armenian version of kemalism.

They also say Kurds are foreigners while armenians are #2 immigrants to eastern anatolia (turks being #1).

[agent007]

fuck iranians ,,they just want seperate kurds this all is bullshitt.....kill everi farsi or iranian who visit kurdish areas they are biggest liers ..go back to india you fucking fags...

[Diri]

fuck iranians ,,they just want seperate kurds this all is bullshitt.....kill everi farsi or iranian who visit kurdish areas they are biggest liers ..go back to india you fucking fags...

You are gonna be banned if you don't stop this bullshit...

WARNING GIVEN!

[Gudea]

fuck iranians ,,they just want seperate kurds this all is bullshitt.....kill everi farsi or iranian who visit kurdish areas they are biggest liers ..go back to india you fucking fags...

You are gonna be banned if you don't stop this bullshit...

WARNING GIVEN!

I doubt agent007 is an ethnic Kurd.

[Diri]

fuck iranians ,,they just want seperate kurds this all is bullshitt.....kill everi farsi or iranian who visit kurdish areas they are biggest liers ..go back to india you fucking fags...

You are gonna be banned if you don't stop this bullshit...

WARNING GIVEN!

I doubt agent007 is an ethnic Kurd.

He might as well be "Womanizer" - who knows... All I do know is: We do NOT tolerate such rascist remarks or any other offensive language from anybody - Kurd or not...

[Piling]

He is not womanizer or he would have suddenly change of continent... By the way if he continues to produce the same so elegant and clever posts, he will be banned.

[Vladimir]

Iranian Caucasus studies is owned by Armenians spreading anti-propaganda against Kurds.

http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/mi ... ide132.htm

New article about Yezidi Kurds:

New textbooks highlight division within Armenia’s Yezidi community.

Yezidis in the western Aragatsotn region of Armenia have taken a dim view of government efforts, supported by the UN children’s agency, UNICEF, to bolster minority education in the republic.

At the beginning of September, at an event staged in the Yezidi village of Alagyaz, government officials said that new textbooks in minority languages would be distributed to schools in minority-populated villages, while UNICEF said it would provide stationary and other supplies.

Less than a month later, however, Yezidis in Alagyaz and ten surrounding villages were complaining. Their language is the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish, but the books funded and provided by the government were instead written in Ezdiki. While the latter is still Kurdish by another name, the alphabet chosen for publication was in the unaccustomed Cyrillic alphabet instead of the more usual Latin or Arabic scripts.

“All schools have at present is old Soviet-era textbooks,” said Gohar Saroava, a young journalist with the Mesopotamia newspaper in Yerevan and one of the few Muslim Kurds remaining in Armenia. Others, however, are more outspoken. “These [new] books are a shame and we don't want to have this rubbish,” said Torkom Khudoyan, vice-president of the National Committee of Yezidis of Armenia.

Speaking to IWPR, both UNICEF and Hranush Kharatyan, head of the Armenian government’s department for national minorities and religious affairs, confirmed reports that the new textbooks are being rejected, but said that it was outside their remit to intervene. Critics, however, argue that the situation should never have arisen in the first place and allege it is part a continuing attempt to promote a non-Kurdish identity among Armenia’s Yezidis.

Yezidis are the largest ethnic minority in Armenia, with most having arrived in the country in the mid 19th and early 20th centuries. Widely dismissed as devil worship, Yezidism in fact combines elements from Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Although the Yezidis are generally considered to be Kurds who resisted pressure to convert to Islam, there have been attempts to identify them as a separate ethnic group in Armenia since the last years of Soviet rule.

In 1988, an appeal was made to the Soviet authorities by some Yezidi leaders requesting that they be designated as an ethnic group. This coincided with the beginning of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorny Karabakh, as a result of which, thousands of Muslim Kurds fled Armenia, alongside ethnic Azerbaijanis. Yezidis, however, were spared.

In 1989, the request was granted, and in the last Soviet census conducted the same year, out of approximately 60,000 Kurds who had been formerly identified as living in Armenia, 52,700 were for the first time given a new official identity as Yezidis. The 2001 census put the number of Yezidis and Kurds in the republic at 40,620 and 1,519 respectively.

Hasan Tamoyan, editor of the Armenian-language Yezidikhana newspaper and head of the Yezidi programme on Armenian Public Radio, eagerly cites the last census as evidence that Yezidis are not Kurds. Tamoyan is also one of the authors of the controversial new school textbooks.

“There are over 40,000 people who identified themselves as Yezidis and only around 1,500 that identified themselves as Kurds,” said Tamoyan. “Aren’t you inclined to believe the official data? Is Kurmanji listed as a language in the census? The Kurdish language is not even mentioned. There is only the Yezidi language, Ezdiki.”

However, few specialists on the Yezidis outside of Armenia agree.

"The Yezidi religious and cultural tradition is deeply rooted in Kurdish culture and almost all Yezidi sacred texts are in Kurdish," said Philip Kreyenbroek, head of Iranian studies at the University of Goettingen in Germany and a leading specialist on the Kurds and the Yezidis of Turkey and northern Iraq.

Dr Christine Allison, a lecturer at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, INALCO, in Paris currently conducting fieldwork among Yezidis in Armenia, agrees. “I have met more Yezidis in Armenia who believe they are also Kurds,” she said, “and with the exception of two villages in Iraq, Yezidis speak Kurmanji Kurdish. Their oral and material culture is typical of Kurdistan and pretty much identical to non-Yezidi Kurds.”

Nahro Zagros, an ethnic Kurdish PhD student from Iraq studying the ethno-musical traditions of Yezidis at the University of York, concurs. Zagros says that he also stumbled upon what many consider to be the artificial division of the community on a recent visit to Armenia. “The school in Shinkani has refused these textbooks, and teachers from Rya Taze, Alagyaz, Dirik, Orta Chia, Amri Taze and Jamushlow have also rejected them,” he said.

The situation in Armenia also differs markedly from that in neighbouring Georgia, home, according to official statistics, to 18,000 Yezidis.

“There are problems in Georgia, but we [Kurds] are one nation,” said Pir Dima, a Yezidi religious leader from Tbilisi visiting Armenia in September. “It’s just that our religion is different. However, the problem in Georgia is nowhere near as serious as it is in Armenia. Yezidis here [in Armenia] don’t want Armenians to know that they are Kurdish because Muslim Kurds killed Armenians as well as Yezidis [during the 1915 genocide].”

Rostom Atashov, president of the Union of Yezidis in Georgia, told IWPR his community uses the Kurmanji dialect and the Latin script. “We are both Yezidis and Kurds,” he said. “We have one language and it is Kurdish, and if you look at where the Yezidis came from geographically, it is Kurdistan. In Georgia, we’ve never even debated this problem. Yezidis are Kurds, and we all believe that.”

Atashov also says he believes that the division has opened up Armenia’s Yezidi community to the appeal of organisations such as the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party, PKK, currently fighting a separatist guerrilla war in Turkey. “The Armenian government doesn’t want to recognise Yezidis as Kurds so the only people willing to help Yezidis in Armenia with establishing their identity are groups such as the PKK,” he said.

And that certainly seems to be the case in at least six Yezidi villages in the Aragatsotn and Armavir regions of Armenia visited by IWPR this autumn. While many Yezidis openly identified themselves as such, all also said they were Kurmanji-speaking ethnic Kurds. They additionally expressed support for the PKK and displayed portraits of Abdullah Ocalan, the organisation’s imprisoned leader, in their homes, cultural centres and schools.

In recent years, several PKK representatives have also openly visited Armenia to tour Yezidi villages. Last year, Yusuf Avdoyan, a Yezidi from the Armavir region of Armenia, was killed along with six other PKK members fighting in Batman, Turkey. According to the Kurdistan Committee in Armavir, his sister has now also joined the PKK and is currently fighting with them.

Some experts believe that the government has only succeeded in alienating the Yezidis through its education policies. One academic from Europe speaking to IWPR on the condition of anonymity said, “The state seems to be distinctly encouraging the Ezdiki faction and has not latched on to the fact that Kurmanji and Ezdiki, which were the same language for the entire Soviet period, are still the same. The most obvious and cost-effective compromise would be to produce Ezdiki-Kurdish schoolbooks in a mutually agreed alphabet.”

Kharatyan says that she proposed a solution such as this to resolve this conflict over language, but was threatened by both sides of the Yezidi community instead. The government has since said it will monitor the distribution of the controversial textbooks, but the Kurdistan Committee is now printing its own textbooks in the Latin script for distribution to Yezidi schools during the second half of November.

Knyaz Hassanov, head of the Kurdish community in Armenia, told IWPR, “These books do not concern us. They are not important and we have decided to publish our own. The overwhelming majority [of Yezidis in Armenia] consider themselves Kurds, so if 1-2,000 do not feel the same it’s not significant enough of an issue for us. Besides, it’s also their right.”

Onnik Krikorian is a British-born journalist and photojournalist who has written on Yezidis in Armenia since 1998. He has a blog from Armenia at http://oneworld.blogsome.com.

iwpr net

[Gudea]

Sad realities...

They killed thousands of Kurdish civilians, later accused Kurds of a so-called genocide, (which actually real victims were Kurdish civilians not armenian armed gangs), and now intentionally insult Kurds more than turks do.

[KCF]

PROFESSOR GARNIK ASATRIAN is an enemy of kurdish people.
His "Caucasian centre of Iranian Studies" is ideological and political organization.They are not sientists-they are politisians.
In their "orientologistic" articles they are writing that yezidis are not kurds,zaza are armenians by their origin ....
They are armenian nazies .