Yezidi demonstration in support of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) leader, Abdullah Ocalan, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 1999

The annual Yezidi pilgrimage to Shamiram takes place tomorrow and along with Robert Langer from the University of Heidelberg, I’ll be attending to work on another article on the division within the community as to their ethnic identity. Last year, I wrote an article on this subject for Transitions Online. This time, and although it’s always been a specific theme, the new article will concentrate on the issue of Kurdish nationalism in the community.

The Yezidi community is the largest ethnic minority in Armenia even though it numbers just a few tens of thousands of adherents. Although their precise number worldwide is unknown, the followers of this ancient religion are spread throughout Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia, and, as recent immigrants and refugees, Germany.

Widely misconceived as “devil worship,” Yezidism in fact combines elements from Zoroastrianism, Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Yet despite the widespread belief that they are also ethnic Kurds who resisted pressure to convert to Islam, there have been attempts in Armenia to identify the Yezidis as a separate ethnic group since the last years of Soviet rule.

Interestingly, although most Yezidi outside of Armenia consider themselves to be Kurds, the majority here do not. The reason might be political as well as historical but even so, it’s become a subject that I’ve returned to time and time again as that division become more significant.

“Another complicating factor seems to have been the lure of PKK ideology, which attracts some Armenian Yezidis as it does many others,” Kreyenbroek explains.

“As the PKK stresses that Kurdish identity takes precedence over religious affiliations, those who are influenced by it naturally go back to calling themselves Kurds. On the other hand, more traditional [Yezidis] feel threatened and deny the connection between the Kurds and Yezidis all the more strongly. To a lesser extent the same developments can be seen in Germany, where dislike of the PKK causes some Yezidis to play down their Kurdish identity, stressing the Yezidi aspect.”

In the past year or two, the BBC and the Institute of War and Peace Reporting have started to term the Yezidi in Armenia as “Yezidi-Kurds.” However, this is incorrect. Regardless of whether the Yezidi outside of Armenia, as well as most ethnologists, consider that the Yezidi are Kurds, most Yezidi in Armenia, for whatever reasons, do not want to be considered as such and it is this side of the community that appears to be in the majority.

Instead, I think it’s more correct to say that the Yezidi are considered to be ethnic Kurds although a division over identity exists in Armenia. However, in my opinion, this division needs to be addressed somehow because unfortunately, it is also creating problems that may have a long term and detrimental effect on both sides of the community in terms of culture, language, and education.

“The division of the Armenian Yezidis into one smaller group identifying themselves as Kurds and Kurmanji [Kurdish]-speakers and one group defining themselves as Yezidis with their own language is part of the post-Soviet search for identity,” says Robert Langer, a scholar at the University of Heidelberg in Germany who is researching the rituals and traditions of the Yezidis in Armenia.

And it is language that might prove to be the most vexing problem facing the community in Armenia. According to Hranush Kharatyan, head of the government’s department for national minorities and religious affairs, so significant is the issue that it is now “the most actual problem existing among national minorities in Armenia.”

When the Armenian government considered ratifying Kurmanji as the name for the language spoken by the Yezidis and Kurds, for example, emotions ran high and Kharatyan says she was accused and threatened by both sides. In particular, she says, Yezidi spiritual leaders demanded that their language instead be classified as “Yezidi” even if in private they acknowledge that it is Kurmanji.

Anyway, until my new update on the division with the Yezidi community in Armenia and photos from Shamiram, the article written for Transitions Online can be found here and Hetq Online has just published a story by Hermine Mkhitaryan about a socially vulnerable Yezidi family in Armenia facing starvation.

There’s also two Macromedia Flash presentations of photographs taken of the Yezidi in Armenia. The first comprises black and white photographs of last year’s event at Shamiram while the second, consists of color photographs taken by young photographer from Belorus, Andrei Liankevich.

And as if the Yezidi in Armenia don’t have enough problems, Christian missionaries are now attempting to convert people incorrectly identified as Satan worshippers, including those living in Shamiram.