The Human Rights situation of the Yezidi minority - UNHCR

southern parts of what was then Yelizavetpol guberniya, now forming Azerbaijan and
Armenia (Cəbrayil, Zangezur districts), as well as Naxçivan (Nakhichevan). 27
2.3 Yezidi-Muslim Kurd Relations in the Ottoman Empire
Some mention is required of the ambivalent relationship between Yezidis and Muslim Kurds
in the Ottoman Empire, as a backdrop to Yezidi-Muslim Kurd and Yezidi-Armenian
relationships today. Alongside Arabs, Muslim Kurds formed a non-Turkish but nonetheless
Sunni Muslim group within the Ottoman Empire, which was deemed by the Ottoman
government to be available for assimilation into the Turkish core. Muslim Kurds were subject
to a policy of dispersal and relocation in order to facilitate the process of assimilation. 28
However, the late Ottoman period was characterized by increasing hostility and violence
between Muslim Kurdish tribes and Armenian villagers. 29 This violence resulted mainly in
losses to Armenian communities and was largely sanctioned by the Ottoman government. In
1890 the Ottoman government organized irregular Kurdish cavalry forces into the so-called
Hamidiye Regiments, formed of Kurds from regions bordering the Russian Caucasus.
Hamidiye units were used, for instance, to suppress Armenian peasant revolts against
additional taxes demanded of them by Kurdish tribesmen. 30 Muslim Kurds later provided one
of the main sources of manpower for the “Special Organization” created at some point
between 1911 and 1913 and later used to implement deportations and mass killings of
Armenians. 31 Some sources have further claimed that in the aftermath of 1915, Muslim
Kurds alongside Ottoman army units also perpetrated atrocities on Yezidis who did not want
to convert to Islam. 32 In Armenia today some Yezidi community leaders refer to 300,000
Yezidis killed by Turks and Muslim Kurds in the Ottoman Empire, though pending further
research this figure must be taken as conjecture.
Narratives of these historical events are significant in configuring contemporary Yezidi-
Muslim Kurd, Armenian-Kurdish and Armenian-Yezidi relationships. To a considerable
extent Armenians and Yezidis share a common narrative of repression at the hands of Turks
and Muslim Kurds. These perceptions are especially significant for Yezidis in Armenia, the
largest Yezidi population in the South Caucasus today.
2.4 Triggers of Twentieth Century Yezidi Migration
After the October Revolution and the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk the Ottoman Empire was
able to re-establish its 1877 border with Russia. There ensued a significant influx into the
South Caucasus of Yezidis who did not want a return to Ottoman rule; some Yezidis also
fought in Armenian forces against the Ottoman army in 1918. 33 Yezidi settlements appear to
have been concentrated in territory today forming part of Armenia, particularly the foothills
of Mount Aragats; in Georgian regions they congregated in larger cities and towns to lead a
precarious existence in the margins of the urban proletariat.
27 Pirbari, p.3
28 Akçam, p.xvii
29 Idem, pp.23-30
30 Idem, pp.28-9
31 Idem, p.140
32
Anqosi, K., The Yezidi Kurds’ Tribes & Clans of South Caucasus, The International Journal of Kurdish
Studies, Vol.19, 2005, p.59
33 Guest, p.191
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