One topic that I’ve covered constantly since June 1998 has been that of Yezidis and Kurds in Armenia. Considered to be ethnic Kurds that resisted attempts to convert to Islam, Yezidis in Armenia are the republic’s largest minority. However, local factors such as the conflict over Nagorno Karabakh and a shared history with Armenians of persecution at the hands of Moslem Kurds in Turkey during the Genocide have given way to divisions within the Yezidi community in Armenia.

It’s a topic I’ve constantly returned to with my latest feature article due to be published in the January 2008 issue of Geographical. The last article on this subject was for the Institute of War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) last year and examined the impact this division had on minority education for the Yezidis in Armenia.

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.

[…]

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.

[…]

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. […]

Now, fast forward to a few days ago when I discovered a post on the Kurds in Armenia on Paul Goble’s WindowOnEurasia blog. Goble is better known to most Armenians familiar with attempts to find a solution to the Karabakh conflict as being the “author” of the so-called “Goble Plan” which envisaged a land swap between Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve the conflict. In particular, this meant territory in Southern Armenia, and specifically, Meghri.

Paul Goble thought that“in principle there are three ways “to solve” the NK problem: to oust or kill all Armenians living there now, to station a great number of foreign forces to move these sides apart or to hand over the NKAR under Armenian control”. But the author himself felt that all these options were impossible to realize: the first option because of moral considerations, the second because it was not physically possible, and the“third one is impossible politically since in this case Azerbaijan will become the side unfairly treated both from the viewpoint of loss of territory and the question of water supply to Baku”. Therefore, he sought the key to the resolution of the problem in the exchange of territories, including the following conditions:

First, handing over a part of the NKAR to Armenia together with the territories of the sources of rivers flowing in the direction of Azerbaijan. Secondly, handing over the Armenian territory connecting the Azerbaijan Republic with Nakhichevan to Azerbaijan’s control.

Evidently Paul Goble understood that in the case of the realization of this variant, Armenia would find itself in a difficult situation because it would lose its connection with Iran, which is of vital importance to Armenia. That is why, in 1996, he introduced some amendments to his plan. In particular, he proposed to create a corridor through the southern region of Armenia, Meghri, to Iran, where some international forces would be stationed.

Later, Goble suggested handing over a part of the NKAR to Armenia in exchange for handing over a part of Armenian territory, namely the Meghri region, to Azerbaijan. This would enable Azerbaijan to have an immediate border with Nakhichevan.

The Goble Plan, for one reason or another, failed to find support first of all from the Republic of Armenia and NK. It is important, however, to note that according to media reports and oppositionists in Armenia, some variant of a territorial swap like the one proposed by Goble was seriously considered during talks between the presidents of the Azerbaijan Republic and the Republic of Armenia in 2000-2001. Officially, Yerevan and Baku were refuting these reports and there was not any additional information about this variant, even if it was actually discussed. (see further)

Now that appears to be totally off the cards, Goble has turned his attention to involving the Kurds again, and refers to the idea of recreating the Autonomous Oblast of Red Kurdistan which existed as an administrative unit of the former Soviet Union for a few years in the 1920s, and which Goble mentions as an apparent way to derail the peace process. During the Nagorno Karabakh conflict there were also attempts to set up something similar, but more on that later.

Twenty years ago, an Armenian samizdat author suggested that restoring Kurdish autonomous districts in the southern Caucasus could help resolve the Karabakh dispute, but now Armenia’s 60,000-strong Kurdish community has taken a step likely to make finding a solution to that conflict even more difficult.

Last week, the leaders of that community endorsed Serzh Sarkisyan for president of Armenia in the hopes that the latter would work to re-establish the Kurdish autonomous district in the Lachin corridor of Azerbaijan, where in 1992, the Kurds played a key roe in breaking through Baku’s military encirclement of Karabakh.

Sarkizyan, for his part, did nothing to encourage or discourage the Kurds in this regard, saying only that he was “proud that national minorities living in Armenia support [his] candidacy.” But if he said nothing about the restoration of a Kurdish district, other Armenians and Kurds were outspoken about that possibility.

According to a Russian analyst, Kurds in Iraq support the restoration of a Kurdish district in the Lachin corridor, viewing it as analogous to and a precedent for a Kurdish region in Iraq.

[…]

At a moment when some officials are expressing hope about a breakthrough via the Minsk Group and others, including the International Crisis Group, are suggesting that there is a threat of renewed fighting, the Kurdish initiative in Armenia provides those opposed to any settlement with yet another means to block it.

However, Goble’s analysis is factually incorrect. Firstly, there are not 60,000 Kurds in Armenia. There are a little over 42,000 and more to the point, they are mainly Yezidis and not Moslem Kurds. Secondly, the Yezidi community’s apparent support for Sarkisian is deceptive given that Aziz Tamoyan, who said the minority would vote for the prime minister in his presidential bid next year, is considered to represent that side of the community which says they are not Kurds.

Absurdly, Tamoyan even goes as far as saying Yezidis do not speak the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish even though they actually do.

Basically, in no way can Tamoyan be considered to talk for or represent the “Kurdish” community in Armenia, and for once I’m glad that an Armenian news report finally manages to identify this division within the community, especially at the same time as he is taking a political role in the internal life of Armenia. Tamoyan is believed to actually represent a minority of Yezidis in Armenia, and those pro-Kurdish Yezidis despise him immensely.

A leader of Armenia’s Yezidi community on Tuesday urged its members to vote for Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian in the forthcoming presidential elections. Aziz Tamoyan said the decision to endorse Sarkisian’s presidential bid was made by the leadership of his organization which claims to represent Yezidis living in and outside Armenia. He said the Union of the Yezidis of the World believes that ethnic minorities in any country must “stand by their government.” “I have already called on the Yezidi people to vote for Serzh Sarkisian in the presidential elections,” Tamoyan told reporters. Yezidis are Armenia’s largest ethnic minority, numbering an estimated 40,000 members. Some of them consider themselves non-Muslim Kurds. Tamoyan’s leadership of the mainly rural community is disputed by other prominent Armenian Yezidis. They have not endorsed Sarkisian or any other potential presidential candidate yet. Yezidi leaders pledged their and their community’s allegiance to three different Armenian parties in the run-up to last May’s parliamentary elections. […]

Anyway, the issue of Red Kurdistan is indeed interesting, and not least because Thomas Goltz detailed in his excellent book, Azerbaijan Diary, how Yezidis from Armenia were bussed in to Lachin after it was taken by Armenian forces to pretend to be the town’s ethnic [Azerbaijani] Moslem Kurdish population that was instead forced to flee. In interviews with Yezidis since the Karabakh conflict, that appears to be the case, and one visiting scholar researching the Yezidis in Armenia says that he has come across talk of promises to resurrect a Kurdish zone around Lachin in return for their support.

However, it never came and it probably never will. More significantly, though, when prominent analysts such as Paul Goble write seemingly in such an authoritative way regarding the Kurds in Armenia, and of the announcement of support for Sarkisian from a figure who is one of the main forces in denying the Kurdish origins of the Yezidis, some concern has to be raised regarding their actual knowledge on the subject. Even despite a 2001 census, for example, Goble can’t even get the figure right for the actual number of Yezidis and Kurds living in Armenia. He also hasn’t allowed my comments through correcting that figure.

Regardless, as I said, it’s been a topic I’ve extensively covered since 1998 and for anyone who truly wants to examine the situation of the Yezidis and Kurds in Armenia there’s plenty of my material available online. In particular, because the issue of ethnic identity is so sensitive, I’ve made available most of the transcripts of interviews with leaders and figures on both sides of the divide via the Armenian News Network — Groong. Much of that is condensed in an article I wrote for Transitions Online, and as I said, the next feature article will be available in the January 2008 issue of Geographical magazine.

There’s also plenty more coverage on this blog under the appropriate category. Anyway, Paul Goble’s (factually incorrect) post, Armenia’s Kurds Get in the Way of Any Karabakh Resolution, is here. There’s also the excellent Kurdistan and Hayastan — Hand in Hand blog here.