10.2002 - Source: Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

Overview on the Kurdish community in Armenia ("The Ethnic Minorities of Armenia") [#9856],  [ID 3077]

"Eastern Armenia (today’s Republic of Armenia) saw the Kurds appear in the early 19th century
(1813, 1818), later, before the turn of the century most of them moved to the territory of the
contemporary Azerbaijan Republic, to a religiously congenial environment, 150 000 Kurds residing
there to date.
With regard to the issue of Yezidi identity (see the Section on the Yezidis), there had been 6 000
Kurdish residents in Armenia, mainly in the Azerbaijani enclaves. Most of them, by virtue of
confessional and cultural relatedness (children attending Azerbaijani schools, mixed marriages,
etc.), left Armenia along with the Azerbaijanis at the onset of the Karabakh confrontation, in spite of
the efforts by the Armenian authorities and the public to prevent the population shift.
As of today, Kurdish intellectuals residing mainly in the cities, as well as rural residents living
scattered in the Abovian and Masis district count about 1000 persons.
Some schools in Armenia provide instruction in the Kurmanji. Beside the vernacular, all Kurds
are fluent in Armenian, while the intellectuals also know Russian.
The rural population are mostly occupied in agriculture, horticulture, melon plantations. The
Kurdish intellectuals in Armenia – engineers, lawyers, doctors, scientists – are active in public life:
publishing the tabloid “RIA TAZA”, formerly the only Kurdish paper all over the Soviet Union,
broadcasting on the radio in Kurdish. Being developed now are new school textbooks in Kurdish.
The Writers’ Union of Armenia has a department of the Kurdish writers of Armenia.
Armenia’s Orientalistic scholarship retains long-time traditions of Kurdish Studies. In the last
decades Armenia has been pioneering the world in publishing the scholarly research in Kurdological
problems as well as in publishing translations and fiction in Kurdish. It was here that the first ever
films on the Kurds have been taken, containing abundant ethnographic material.
Formerly the Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences, and now the Caucasian
Centre for Iranian Studies and the Department of Iranian Studies at the Yerevan State University
have been doing research on the Kurdish language, literature, History, Ethnography. At the
Department of Iranian Studies there is the MA course on Kurdology."

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