Minorities

[Arpa]

Minorities.

Of all the people it seems like Armenians are most keenly obssessed with minorities. A people that can least afford it. Look below, population estimate 2004. Case in point, Kurds which seem to be the single highest number.

 

As it is evident from the article in HETQ, Yezidis don't even call themselves Kurds, they all have Armenian sounding personal names and surnames ending in -ian. I have met and talked to them in person. They speak better Armenian than 80% of us and some even flaunt the Christian symbols they have around their neck. Is it their wish that they be identified as a minority and labeled as such or is it our official and popular custom to segregate and emphasize the difference instead of just taking them at face value, i.e. Armenian, at least as citizenship goes. Specially in the case of the Kurds and Yezidis as opposed to Russians and Ukranians, the former don't even a state to identify with. In contrast most other states, in particular the one immediately to the west of ROA labels their minorities as Christian Turks and or mountain Turks with no refernce to their ethnicity. Is that why they are growing in leaps and bounds while we are getting smaller as we speak. Off the topic? Not only we label our minorities we even label our own as belonging to this or that denomination, country of birth and origin etc.

 

Is it not time to identify pwople by their citizenship rather than ethicity?

 

 

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107292.html

 

Area: 11,506 sq mi (29,800 sq km)

 

Population (2004 est.): 2,991,360 (growth rate: –0.3%); (Armenian, 93%; others, Kurds, Ukrainians, and Russians); birth rate: 11.4/1000; infant mortality rate: 24.2/1000; life expectancy: 71.2; density per sq mi: 260

 

Yezidis;

Armenia 's Yezidi community is the largest ethnic minority in the Republic of Armenia . Yet, despite its small size, the community is divided over its ethnic origins. Although many Yezidi outside of Armenia consider themselves Kurds, in the Republic, most do not.

 

 

http://www.hetq.am/eng/society/0410-yezidi.html

 

Letter by Onnik, excerpt, full text at Groong;

There seems to be a lot of inaccurate reporting on national minorities -- and in particular, the Yezidi and Kurds -- coming out of Armenia recently when statistics do exist. After the BBC recently reported that there were 200,000 Kurds (predominantly Yezidi) in the Republic, this week ArmInfo (see: http://www.groong.c quotes statistics ranging from 300-400,000. In reality, according to the 2001 census, the number of Yezidi (a religious group considered by most academics outside the Republic to predominantly comprise of ethnic Kurds) in Armenia stands at 40,620 and the number of [those that identified themselves solely as] Kurds at 1,519. At the same time, the statistics are confusing (although accurate as a total) because it is estimated that there are no more than a few hundred Moslem Kurds left in Armenia.