Zeytun, Alagyaz, Aragatsotn Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006

I’ve literally just stepped in the door after spending a day and a half in the Yezidi village of Alagyaz. It wasn’t my first visit to the village, but it was the first time I stayed overnight. Travelling with Nahro Zagros, his Syria-based British journalist and academic friend Lydia, and Hetq Online’s Hasmik Hovhannisyan, we had a blast. In addition to covering Nahro’s work on ethno-musicology, Hasmik and I also had the opportunity to work on some other stories, and not least in the area of education which I also covered last year for UNICEF.

In some cases, especially in Yezidi communities, pupils and teachers cannot even communicate with each other. In these communities, while the teachers are Armenian, each new intake of children from Yezidi families can hardly understand anything other than their mother tongue.

“Textbooks are also in Armenian but it takes two or three years before Yezidi children can understand the language,” says Soukhudyan. “Until then, the child’s development is frustrated and, actually, prevented. There are some Yezidi teachers, of course, but as they generally come from other villages, there is also the problem of transportation, especially during the winter months.”

[…]

However, despite these obstacles, there are children in minority communities that would like to enter higher education. In the Yezidi village of Zovuni, for example, one girl cries as she tells of her inability to study French when she finishes school. Another Yezidi girl says that if given the opportunity, she would like to study, and later teach, Armenian language and literature.

Of course, another personal as well as professional interest of mine was to again look into the issue of Yezidi identity in Armenia. Although the vast majority of Yezidi in Europe, Georgia and Iraq consider themselves to be Kurds, here there is what is considered to be an artificial division as to identity. I’ve covered this issue since 1998 and know full well that in Alagyaz and the surrounding villages, the Yezidi are quite open about their Kurdish roots as well as their support for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

When Aziz Tamoyan sits behind his desk in the cramped and dilapidated room that serves as his office in the Armenian capital, he says that he does so as president of the country’s largest ethnic minority, the Yezidis.

Pointing at the handmade posters stuck on the wall to one side of his cluttered desk, Tamoyan reads aloud the slogan that also serves as the motto for his newspaper. “My nationality is Yezidi, my language is Yezideren, and my religion is Sharfadin,” he proclaims, opening a copy of Yezdikhana to reveal the results of the last census conducted in Armenia three years ago.

“There are 40,620 Yezidis and 1,519 Kurds living in Armenia,” he continues. “These are the official figures from the census and that should be all that you need to know. The Yezidis have no connection with the Kurds and there are no Muslim Kurds in Armenia. According to the census, nobody speaks Kurdish in Armenia.”

But 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, disagrees.

“The Yezidi religious and cultural tradition is deeply rooted in Kurdish culture and almost all Yezidi sacred texts are in Kurdish,” he says. “The language all Yezidi communities have in common is Kurdish and most consider themselves to be Kurds, although often with some reservations.”

As if to illustrate how these reservations have manifested themselves as a problem far out of proportion to the size of the community, next door to Tamoyan’s office sits Amarik Sardar, editor of Riya Taza, established in 1930 and still the oldest surviving Kurdish newspaper in the world.

Anyway, lots to write, but I’m a little exhausted. However, one photo of a beautiful Yezidi girl, Zeytun. We ate and drank into the early hours with her family last night, and we had great fun with her baby brother Tital. Strange to come across an Armenian today who came to Alagyaz to sell clothes and other items to the Yezidi. “Why are you taking photographs of these dirty, ugly children,” he asked Hasmik and I. Unfortunately, racism and predjudice are alive and [un]well among some Armenians.

In this case, for sure, this guy was wrong and totally out of order. Anyway, Hasmik’s articles will be published by Hetq Online over the coming weeks. I’ll post some more photographs later or tomorrow.

Zeytun, Alagyaz, Aragatsotn Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online

Hasmik & Tital, Alagyaz, Aragatsotn Region, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Hetq Online 2006