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Kurds in Armenia
16.10.2007
By Hasmik Hovhannisyan
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October
16, 2007
Approximately 40 million Kurds live in the world;
about 20 million live in Turkey, 9 million in Iran,
6 million in Iraq, 3 million in Syria. And the rest
are scattered all over the world. Almost any
European country has a Kurdish Diaspora; the largest
community is 1 million people and is registered in
Germany.
Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Armenia.
Over 80000 Kurds lived in Armenia in the Soviet
times, now they make a number of about 40000. In
Armenia the Kurdish people are represented by two
ethnic groups: the Kurds and the Yezidis. Up to the
end of the 1980s the Yezidis were identified with
the Kurds. The Yezidis came to be considered a
separate minority group when late in the 1980s the
Yezidi movement started in Armenia in order to
attain the official acknowledgement of their
separate identity. There is no point in dwelling on
the rather deep and intricate reasons of this
phenomenon. Many people in Armenia still think that
the Kurds and the Yezidis are two different peoples.
Very few know that the Yezidis are the Kurds who
have preserved their own religion - Yezidism.
In Armenia only Muslim Kurds are officially
considered to be Kurds. There are no more than a
thousand of them in the country. The Kurds who
practice Yezidism or consider themselves Yezidis by
nationality and who are about 40 000 are called
Yezidis.
One of the regions with the densest Kurdish-Yezidi
population, those who consider themselves Kurds by
nationality, but Yezidis by religion - is the Marz
of Aragatsotn. 11 out of the 20 villages here are
Kurdish. The central village is Alagyaz.
The 75-year-old Bimbash is counting his Amber beads:
his face is covered with a net of wrinkles. His
unusually light-blue, almost white, eyes are looking
into their own depths, into the past. He is singing
the sad song of unreturned love. His voice, still
youthfully pure and clear, echoes slightly in the
room not piled up with furniture. The old man is
sitting on a low stool near the furnace; chickens
are swarming around his feet.
Bimbash Kochoyan has sung at weddings, christenings,
and funerals all his life. He could have become
famous. He was offered to have his singing recorded,
but he refused - he has enough listeners at home -
Bimbash has raised ten children. He fails to
remember both the names of his grandchildren and
great-grandchildren and their number. Now Bimbash is
being listened to by his son Khdr and a couple of
neighbors with their children - all of them men.
Khdr’s wife is at home, too, but she is not to be
seen anywhere. The Kurdish woman is invisible. She
does not sit at table with men; neither does she
interfere into their conversation. |
Armenian Kurds
Photo Hetq am |
The men have earth floor
under their feet; they have naked walls behind their
backs. Mount Aragats can be noticed through the
window. Transparent clouds have gathered over the
mountain. It seems that steam is coming out of the
crater from among the four peaks. It is July, but it
is as cold as late in autumn. And the colors are
bright autumn tints.
Alagyaz is one of the most beautiful places in
Armenia; besides it is absolutely untouched by time.
Bimbash’s house is just like the Armenian house of
the nineteenth century described in Armenian history
textbooks. The house consists of three main premises
- tonratun or hatsatun (the house of bread) where
they bake bread in the tandir and where the family
gathers at cold nights; on one side of the tonratun
are the premises for the cattle, on the other are
the rooms (in many houses there is only one room).
There are iron beds in the bedrooms one or two of
which are meant for the piles of mattresses - the
main and obligatory constituent of Kurdish dowry.
Dung is drying up in the yard. This is the fuel for
the winter. Most of the villagers heat their houses
with dung. It is not enough for the whole winter,
but they cannot afford to buy wood.
Zarif, Khdr’s wife, makes cheese.
“If there are buyers, who will buy the cheese for at
least 1000 drams per kilo, we will sell,” Khdr says.
“But now we are making it for ourselves. It costs us
too much to take it to Yerevan or Aparan. But we
give the milk to the cheese factory (it is in the
same village) for 100 drams per liter.”
Khdr says jokingly that he is none of a Kurd, he is
a real Armenian. “I do not breed sheep. There is no
Kurd without sheep,” he says. Khdr has four cows,
chickens, geese and ducks. He does not breed sheep:
there is no money to buy any. “But before the
collapse of the Soviet Union, at the times of state
farms, I had a hundreds head of sheep,” he recalls.
All these years Khdr’s all financial means were
spent on the children; none was left for sheep. All
three of Khdr’s sons served in the army: two have
already returned; the third one will be demobilized
in the fall. (Six young men from Aragats are serving
in the army now.)
“Two earned praises and medals during their
service,” Khdr says with pride in his voice. When
Serzh Sarkisyan (the Minister of Defense at that
time) visited our village, he shook hands with me
and congratulated me on having such sons.”
Khdr’s eldest son is at home. The younger one who is
only 21 has left for Russia to earn his living.
“He has been moving from town to town for over a
month already, and he cannot find a job,” Khdr says
distressed. “He cannot return either; there are no
jobs here either.”
All of his sons want to study.
“My eldest son is studying law, the younger one is
studying to become a dental mechanic, and the
youngest wants to become a machine-operator. But
where will I find money to pay for their studies?”
Khdr’s family grows potatoes. “Potatoes are the only
thing to grow in this cold climate,” he says.
Besides, the village has no problems with drinking
water, but it has no water to irrigate.
Gas pipes have recently been installed in
neighboring Ria Taza. Khdr says that they promised
to install the pipes in their village, too, but most
likely very few will enjoy the blue fuel: it is very
expensive to install pipes from the main line to the
houses.
“It is not easy to live in the village,” Bimbash
shakes his head. “The problems are the same in all
villages.”
Bimbash moved over to Alagyaz from the region center
of Aparan 15 years ago. He says that even though
most of the residents of the village are the
off-springs of the refugees during the Armenian
massacres of Kurd-Yezidis, his ancestors came here
much earlier, in the 19th century (the first Kurd
truly appeared in Armenia in the mid 19th century.)
If in Aparan the Kurds were a minority in comparison
with Armenians, in Alagyaz there are only three
Armenian families out of one hundred present.
However, both here and in Aparan Armenians and Kurds
do not lay differences between themselves. “When in
other regions, for example, in the Ararat valley
conflicts of everyday life arise between Armenians
and the Kurds (Yezidis),” Ghahraman Aloyan, the
History teacher at the Alagyaz school says, “The
Kurd (Yezid) is to blame. This is not actually a
manifestation of racism; rather this is because
Armenians stay aloof towards the representatives of
ethnic minorities. But we do not have such things
here, we are all equal.”
Both Bimbash and the other residents of the village
emphasize the fact that they have always lived well
in Armenia, unlike anywhere else. Both nations have
similar cultures, ways of life, and fates. Both
Kurds and Armenians consider the dhol, the zurna,
and the saz their national musical instruments. Both
peoples have common holidays and traditions.
“Until the 1980’s Armenia was the cultural center
for a 40-million nation that had no motherland,”
Ghahraman Aloyan says.
The President of the Council of the Kurdish
Community in Armenia Count Hasanov says that the
reasons for these have been the enjoyed freedom
regarding practicing one’s culture, language and
traditions, the freedom that the Kurds have enjoyed
in Armenia. In Muslim countries where most of the
Kurds have lived the Kurdish language, culture, and
religion were forbidden. But in Armenia the first
newspaper in the Kurdish dialect Kurmanji - The Ria
Taza (The New Way) was published in 1930. On the
Armenian Public Radio there was an hour and a half
long Kurdish program (now half an hour is allocated
to the Kurds, and half an hour to the Yezidis). “The
Kurdish radio and the Kurdish newspaper in Armenia
significantly contributed to the rise of national
self-consciousness among the Kurds, especially in
Iraq and in Turkey.”
In the Soviet times there was a Kurdish Studies
chair at the Oriental Studies Department. The first
documentaries devoted to the life of Kurds were made
in Armenia, too. In the 1920’s the first Kurdish
schools were opened. In the Aragats village of
Shamiram a copy of Lalesh, a holy temple complex of
the Kurds, situated in the territory of Iran was
built.
And the cultural center of the Kurds living in
Armenia has always been Alagyaz, which gave the
country more than 20 scientists, artists and even
two academicians in the course of 70 years.
There was a national theatre in Alagyaz. Now it is
not functioning because of lack of funds.
Only two years ago two dancing groups consisting of
Kurdish and Armenian children were functioning in
Alagyaz. Now they are not functioning either, but
the reason, in this case, is not financial. Osman
and Ararat, the creators of the groups, say that as
soon as the Kurdish girls are 13 or 14, the parents
take them away from the group: time has come for
them to think of marriage. Thus, every two years
they had to start a new group.
There used to be a museum in Alagyaz, the only
Kurdish museum in Armenia. To be more exact, this
was just a room in a dwelling house. Beritan, who
lives in Alagyaz, used to collect Kurdish national
clothes, pots and pans, jewelry from village to
village. One of the rooms of her two-bedroom
apartment was turned into a museum, the other was a
first-aid post, for she is a medical nurse, and the
third served as the office of the Committee
Kurdistan.
The first-aid post was the only one for the 20
villages in the marz of Aragatsotn, except for the
polyclinics in Tsakhkahovit, a village that is
kilometers away from Alagyaz. The residents of
Alagyaz say that everyone in the region preferred
going to Beritan: she was much more efficient and
charged less. Beritan worked on beneficial lines:
she bought the scanty equipment at the first-aid
post with friends’ assistance, and spent all of her
little salary on medications.
A year ago the owners of the house, who had left for
Russia to work, decided to return. So the exhibits
moved over to Beritan’s brother’s place where they
are still piled up in one of the rooms. Now Beritan
is studying to become a doctor, “to be more useful
in the village.” She comes to the village over the
weekend, and receives the patients at home. The rest
of the time the local residents have to travel
either to Tsakhahovit or to the region center -
Aparan.
The school in Alagyaz with its 80 schoolchildren is
one of the three schools in the marz where the vast
majority of the students are Kurds. All the three
schools are Armenian ones: the Kurdish children
study their mother tongue twice a week, but not at
regular hours allocated for these studies, rather
they do Kurdish at the expense of other lessons.
The Alagyaz school has been the only one in the
region from where students have regularly entered
higher educational institutions since the late
1980’s (at present about 10 Kurdish children are
studying at higher educational institutions). The
tendency of letting the girls study only a couple of
grades (for their further education is not necessary
for their main role as a wife and a mother) is
gradually disappearing in Alagyaz.
Literally a month ago the Council of the Kurdish
community in Armenia was created. Before that the
Kurds were represented in the public life of the
country through a number of organizations such as
the editorial staff of the Ria Taza issued for
already 78 years in Kurmanji, the Union of Kurdish
writers under the Union of Armenian writers, the
Kurdish Studies Division at the Institute of
Oriental Studies, The Kurdistan Committee.
“All these organizations have functioned separately
from one another, hardly ever cooperating. The
Council will unite all these organizations and will
coordinate their work,” Count Hasanov, the President
of the Kurdish community, says.
The organization is going to deal with both the
preservation and the deepening of the
Kurdish-Armenian friendship, and problems within the
community that include the problem of Kurdish
schools. The schools in the Kurdish villages need
repairs and normal furniture. The problem of
students is very acute: the schoolchildren study by
books brought from abroad. A couple of years ago the
Yezidi schools one of which is the Alagyaz school
were offered textbooks in “the Yezidi language.” In
fact, the “the Yezidi language” is the same Kurmanji.
Simply, the textbooks were written in Cyrillic,
which the Kurds stopped to use after the collapse of
the Soviet Union, going back to the Latin alphabet.
The Armenian government approved the textbooks, but
the Kurds refused to take them. Now the Council of
the Kurdish Community is preparing textbooks to be
published in Kurmanji.
“We are going to raise the issue of teaching the
Kurdish language at schools,” Count Hasanov says. “I
did Kurmanji as a foreign language twice a week when
I was at school at the Soviet times. We want to have
more class-hours allocated to the Kurds for studying
their mother tongue.”
But the main problem is that of the lack of
teachers. “The old teachers retire, and there is no
change in the generations. We have raised this issue
in the government, and a program will start to be
implemented from the beginning of this school year
according to which every year one or two Kurdish
school graduates will study at the Teachers’
Training College out of competition and funded by
the state but on contract that after their have
completed their education they will teach at the
school they left for at least 3 years.”
The Council of the Kurdish Community has an official
monthly newspaper - The Zagros. Both the Zagros
(which used to be called the Mesopotamia) and the
Ria Taza are financially supported by the community
and through state subsidies (500 000 drams a year).
Mainly, the newspapers write about the problems
within the community and on the Kurdish liberation
movement, headed by Abdullah Ocalan, whose portrait
or, at least, photo can be found in almost all
houses in Alagyaz.
“If we had sufficient financial means, the
newspapers would be issued at least once a week.
Because of the lack of funds, only two people have
remained out of the 15 in the editorial staff of the
Ria Taza,” Count Hasanov says.
Besides all this, the Kurds think that the
Parliament must give at least a quota to the ethnic
minorities and in particular to the Kurds, for they
are the largest minority.
“Every year the state allocates 10 million drams for
the cultural and religious events of 11 ethnic
minorities. In Saryan Street there is a two-storeyed
center for the development of the cultures of ethnic
minorities with a conference hall, rooms for a
library, and a banquet room,” Count Hasanov says.
Not only Kurdish, but also even the Armenian
children know Kurmanji in Alagyaz. All the Kurds,
living in Armenia, even those, who are born in
intermarriages, know the native tongue. The
traditions and customs are passed on from generation
to generation; however this is not true about the
religion - Yezidism.
“Our religion is very simple,” Bimbash says, “we
worship the Sun. The Sun is what gives life to every
living being. You wake up in the morning, wash, open
the window; the rays of the sun get into the room;
you say your prayer; that’s it.”
In fact, Yezidism is a rather complex religion with
many taboos, fasts and obligations. You cannot
become a Yezidi; you need to be born one. Many
scientists ascribe the appearance of Yezidism to the
XI - XII centuries. There are no accurate data on
the appearance of this religion. It might have
appeared much earlier, for it has common roots with
Zoroastrianism.
Yezidism is a monotheist religion, with God and the
seven arch-angles at the head. Both in Armenia and
outside of it, an inaccurate opinion on Kurd-Yezidis
worshiping the Satan in the shape of a fallen
Peacock angel can still be heard. In reality, the
peacock in the Zoroastrian religion and in many
others does not symbolize the evil, rather it
symbolizes the Sun. God created the seven
arch-angles who later, together with him, created
the universe. First Angel Peacock, Malaki Taus, was
created. God appointed him his assistant in the
creation of his most important work - the human
being. When Adam was created, God called the
archangels and made them kneel before him. All
obeyed, except Angel Peacock.
“He is made of mud, but I am made of the Holy
Spirit,” Malaki Taus said. “I will kneel only before
God.”
“This is the answer I expected to hear,” God said
and appointed Malaki Taus the Head Arch-Angel (by
another version, God drove him away from the
Paradise.)
The Yezidis divide into three main castes: the
clergy - the sheikhs and piers, and the laity - the
mrids. The shaikhs and the piers have always played
an essential role in the Yezidi community. It was
the clergy that preserved the Yezidi religion for
centuries and hindered the assimilation of the Kurd-Yezidis
with the other peoples. However, the Alagyaz
villagers say that now in Armenia it is the clergy
that contributes to the ignorance of the Yezidi
Kurds of their religion: the vague answers of the
sheikhs and piers do not satisfy their “flock” any
more. Not that they have stopped to respect their
clergy, rather their public role has become more of
a fiction. Now the clergy does not care even for the
preservation of the essential postulates of the
Yezidi religion: the inadmissibility of the mixture
of the castes and cross-marriages with non-Yezidis.
Yezidis often marry Armenians and in such
cross-marriages both the Armenian and the Yezidi
traditions are preserved. Yezidis are tolerant to
Christianity: they go to church, light candles, and
worship Christian saints.
The article was made by the order of the
Resonansi (Georgia) newspaper in the frame of the
project supported by the EU
hetq am
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