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FOREWORD
This report is based on a fact-finding mission carried out in May 2000 in Azerbaijan and Armenia. Its aim is to give an update on our previous report “The Kurds of Azerbaijan and Armenia” of December 1998. This reports aims at identifying the needs of minorities in the two countries. It highlights such issues in order to bring them to the attention of the international community.
Although die vast majority of Kurds in the former Soviet Union are scattered amongst the republics and have been isolated for much of the century from the wider Kurdish world, Soviet Kurds still maintain a degree of cultural identity despite such difficulties. The cultural identity of the Kurds of Azerbaijan and Armenia however, is jeopardised by numerous factors, including the countries’ status as newly independent states (NISs), harsh economic conditions and neglect on the part of both Governments.
In Azerbaijan minorities enjoy limited cultural freedom. If any sort of political demands are made, they may well result in persecution, as the Talysh and Armenian examples illustrate in Part I, Chapter 3: Elhnic Minorities. With regards to the Kurdish minority the massive displacement caused by the conflict in Nagomo Karabakh and the fear many Kurds have as a result of Azerbaijan’s close friendship with Turkey mean that very few Kurds can benefit from such a situation.
In Armenia minorities are “kept in their place” by a State policy which yes, does allow for a platform for discussion but that generally disregards the claims of minorities. Ironically, it was in Armenia that Kurdish culture flourished during the Soviet regime. As in Azerbaijan, minorities in Armenia do not have any political rights. Moreover, MPs in Parliament are solely Armenian; no minorities are represented.
Both countries have applied for accession to the Council of Europe and have ratified die Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. This inevitably signifies that they both will have to give greater attention to human rights as well as minority issues. They will, otherwise, both find themselves in breach of international conventions.
In 1996, in a preliminary report on the situation of the Kurds of the former Soviet Union, the KHRP recommended that there be a “substantially more systematic exercise in assembling information” about the least-known comers of the Kurdish map. This report attempts to address that need and will stand as an important basis for further research. Much however, still remains to be done.
Kerim Yildiz
Deborah Russo
London, June 2000
Authors’ Acknowledgements
This report merges views, facts and other information gathered during our fact-finding mission to Azerbaijan and Armenia. This project was made possible by the generous financial support of our funders, to whom we owe many thanks.
We are grateful to everyone we met during our visit for providing us with invaluable information for this report. We wish to thank Pervana Mamedova, Chairwoman of the Humanitarian “YUVA” (The Nest) in Baku, who set up numerous of our meetings and whose warmth and hospitality will forever remain in our image of Azerbaijan. We also wish to thank Kazim Kuliyev, Know How Fund and Aid Officer at the British Embassy in Baku, for his logistical support. Thanks are due to Eldar Zeynalov, Director of the Human Rights Centre of Azerbaijan, for illustrating the current situation of ethnic minorities in the country through personal meetings with persecuted minorities, and to Arif Yunusov, Head of Conflictology and Migration Studies at the Institute of Peace and Democracy, for his detailed historical and sociological analyses concerning minorities. Thanks are also due to Nadir Kamaldinov, Director of the Resource Center on National Minorities, and to Imran Valiyev, Chairman of the Center of Legal and Economic Education.
In neighbouring Armenia we wish to thank Christine Mardirossian, Human Rights Officer at the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) for her open support and for making us attend roundtable discussions between the Government, the OSCE, the Council of Europe and local and national NGOs. We also wish to thank Mikael Danielyan, Chairman of the Helsinki Association, for his logistical support and enlightening interview.
Thanks are due to many other individuals, including journalists, civil servants, MPs, government officials, historians, lawyers as well as local and national organisations too numerous to mention.
Last but not least, we wish to thank the Kurdish communities in both countries, for their openness, hospitality and warm heartedness.
Kurdish Human Rights Project
The Kurdish Human Rights Project is an independent, nonpolitical project founded and based in Britain. The KHRP is a registered charity. It is committed to the protection of the human rights of all persons within the Kurdish regions, irrespective of race, religion, sex, political persuasion or other belief or opinion. Its supporters include both Kurdish and non-Kurdish people.
Aims
- to promote awareness of the situation of the Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and the former Soviet Union.
- to bring an end to the violation of the rights of Kurds in these countries.
- to promote the protection of human rights of Kurdish people everywhere.
Methods
- Monitoring legislation, including emergency legislation, and its application.
- Conducting investigations and producing reports on the human rights situation of Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and the former Soviet Union by, amongst other methods, sending trial observers and fact-finding missions.
- Using such reports to promote awareness of the plight of the Kurds on the part of committees established under human rights treaties to monitor compliance of states.
- Using the reports to promote awareness of the plight of the Kurds on the part of the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the national parliamentary bodies and inter-governmental organisations including the United Nations.
- Liasing with other independent human rights organisations working in the same field, and co-operating with lawyers, journalists and others concerned with human rights.
- Offering assistance to indigenous human rights groups and lawyers in the form of advice, training and seminars in international human rights mechanisms.
- Assisting individuals in the bringing of human rights cases against governments.
Historical Outlook
One does not usually associate the Kurds with the Caucasus. Talking about the Kurds reminds people of die conflict still raging in the south east of Turkey, of the PKK1 and of the creation of the “safe haven” for them in northwestern Iraq following the Gulf war. However, in this same period the Caucasus region was involved in ethnic and political conflicts over several areas, and namely that of Nagomo Karabakh. Thousands of Kurds were displaced from their homelands in Lachin and Nagomo Karabakh. And yet the western media only briefly mentioned such a tragedy.
The borders of the former USSR did not include any mainly Kurdish territory adjacent to Kurdistan. The treaty between the Turkish State and the authorities of Soviet Armenia of 1921 fully considered the ethnic composition of the territories in question. As a result, the “Muslim” region of Kars was handed over to Turkey whilst the district of Gumru, the so-called area of Leninakan, was attached to Soviet Armenia.2
Although there were no Kurdish territories as such in the former Soviet Union, compact Kurdish communities existed throughout the Transcaucasian3 and Asian Republics, in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirgiz and Turkmenistan. There are important historical reasons for the wide dispersion of Kurds within the former USSR. Kurds had been living in the Soviet Union for more than a thousand years. Some Kurdish historians even trace the presence of …
1 Kurdistan Workers’ Party.
2 Gerard Chaliand, A People Without a Country: the Kurds and Kurdistan, London, 1993, p. 202.
3 The term “Transcaucasia” is a Russian notion. It refers to the area south of the Caucasus Mountains seen from a “Russian” view, i.e., modern-day Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
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