Tiny ethnic minority disputes ‘common’ error

The world knows them as the “Yazidis,” but this tiny ethnic minority disputes the common misconception and calls themselves the “Ezidis.”

“The whole of the Muslim world, Turks foremost, call us the ‘Yazidis,’ which means devil worshipper. But we, the Ezidis, worship the sun,” said Pir Razmi Siyabend Rashoyan, the religious leader of the three Ezidi villages in Armenia.

According to Rashoyan, the Muslim world is prejudiced against the Ezidis because of their line of descent. “They call us the Yazidis because we came from the bloodline of the Umayyad Caliph Yazid bin Muawiyah, who killed Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed in Kerbala,” he said.

Ezidis make up an important Iraqi minority community. Estimates of the size of the Iraqi communities vary significantly, between 70,000 and 500,000. They are primarily Kurdish speaking, and most live in the Mosul region of northern Iraq. There are traditional communities in Georgia, Turkey and Syria, but these have declined since the 1990s with some of their members migrating to Europe, especially to Germany.

Some scholars have derived the name Yazidi from the Old Iranic “yazata,” or divine being, while others say it is a derivation from Umayyad Caliph Yazid, revered by the Ezidis as an incarnation of the divine figure Sultan Ezi.

Despite the migration trend in other countries, Armenia has a more stable Ezidi community, accounting for about 40,000 people, and they do not see themselves as a minority in Armenia. The Ezidis in Armenia mostly live in the villages of Talin, Barozh and Hogdemperyan, which are 300 kilometers away from the capital, Yerevan.

Due to their village lives, the Ezidis experience chronic water and gas problems. Aziz Tamoyan, the leader of the Ezidi people in Armenia, said the lack of water was felt most during the winter. “Taking a bath is a luxury for the villagers,” Tamoyan said. “They try to survive in the wintertime by melting ice to get fresh water.”

Anna Mistoyan, a resident of Talin, which is few meters away from the Turkish border, said: “There is neither water nor gas. It is torture to live here. During the winter, we cannot even get the amount of water that we get in summer. There is no gas, so we cannot get warm.”

The village’s primary school is poorly cared for and dilapidated. Kinarik Sivazian, one of the longest tenured teachers in the school, said the building desperately needed reconstruction.

“It is almost impossible to study in here during the winter,” Sivazian said. But Garush Hiroshoyan seemed more optimistic about the situation in the village. “I am 90 years old. My father and mother came here after fleeing from Turkey,” Hiroshoyan said. “Yes, we do not have water and gas, but we have peace in this country.”

Tamoyan said the Ezidis in Armenia fled Anatolia during the late days of the Ottoman Empire and suggested that they had also suffered during the 1915 killings of Armenians. “My people got their share from the Armenian genocide in 1915,” Tamoyan said. “After those days, some Ezidis came to Armenia, and some of them migrated to various countries across the world. Although our roots were in Anatolia, the Ezidi population there is almost none at the moment.”

Recent normalization talks between Yerevan and Ankara have been facing various woes and opposition from many sides, but the Ezidis have their own reasons. They do not hesitate to voice their opposition against the negotiations and openly confessed that they still have some bias against not only Turks but also the Kurdish population in southeastern Turkey. The Ezidis said they were fearful that they would encounter problems if the border between Armenia and Turkey were opened.

Tamoyan said they were happy to live in Armenia: “We see ourselves as a part of the Armenian society and totally do not feel like a minority. We can get education in our mother tongue, so we do not have any difficulties at all.”