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.”

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¶1. (S) PKK activities in Armenia seem thus far to be fairly low-level, though Armenia’s Yezidi community — an ethnic minority related to Kurds by blood and language — may be receptive to PKK outreach. Among other things, we have heard reports that the PKK sends money to some Armenian Yezidi and that there are links between Yezidi communities in Armenia and Kurdish militant groups in Turkey. We have also heard that the Armenian government has made lukewarm attempts to hush a freelance journalist who reports extensively on the Yezidi and their affiliations with Kurdish militants. We believe many of these reports to be credible. END SUMMARY. ¶

2. (S) We have undertaken to expand our knowledge of the Kurdish-related Yezidi community in Armenia, and the extent of any ties or sympathies to the PKK terrorist group. The Yezidi are closely related to Kurds; the main difference between the two cultures is religious. While most Kurds are Muslim, the Yezidi practice a distinct religion, rooted in Zoroastrianism, which forbids eating lettuce and wearing the color blue. Some Armenian Yezidi refuse to acknowledge that they speak Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish), insisting instead that they speak “Yezidiki,” which they say is a separate language. (NOTE: The Yezidi clearly speak Kurmanji. Any differences between Kurmanji and the language spoken in Yezidi villages are small, regional variations. END NOTE.)

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AN INTERVIEW WITH AZIZ TAMOYAN

Aziz Tamoyan is the President of the National Union of Yezidi in Armenia and part of field research undertaken in 1998 on the Yezidi minority within the Republic of Armenia. 

Conducted 11 June 1998

AN INTERVIEW WITH SABRI KASH

Sabri Kash is the Representative of the PKK and ERNK in Armenia and the Caucasus. He was interviewed during festivities celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Kurdistan Workers Party [PKK] organised by the Yezidi [Kurdish] community in Armenia, and staged at the Russian Theatre in Yerevan.

Conducted 1 December 1998

AN INTERVIEW WITH AMARIK SARDAR

Amarik Sardar is the Yezidi editor of Riya Taza, the oldest surviving Kurdish newspaper in the world. This interview was held in the Riya Taza office in Yerevan on 25 August 2004 and is part of a follow-up series of interviews to work on the division within the Yezidi minority in Armenia conducted during June 1998.

Conducted 25 August 2004

AN INTERVIEW WITH ROSTOM ATASHOV

Rostom Atashov was born in Tbilisi, Georgia in 1963 and is the President of the `Union of Yazidis of Georgia’ NGO, the larger of two Kurdish organizations in Georgia. 

Conducted 25 September 2006

ACADEMICS ON CULTURAL TRADITIONS OF THE YEZIDIS

Interviews with Dr. Christine Allison, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), and Naro Zagros, PhD student, University of York.

Conducted 24 October 2006