Originally published in GPN, Genocide Prevention Now, Special Issue 5, Winter 2011

In 1915-1918 the upper circles of the Ottoman Empire, taking advantage of the conditions of the World War, organized and realized genocide of Turkey’s national minorities. During a few years the Ottoman Empire actually completely slaughtered the native peoples of the country: Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks. Nowadays the world is aware of numerous facts and details of these terrible atrocities committed by Turkey’s authorities endowed with state power. The world’s most progressive countries condemn the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire on the state level and mark mournful data of the Genocide’s beginning together with Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians.

However, in this sorrowful list of peoples destroyed by Turks, the Yezidis, a distinctive and native nation on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, are never mentioned.

Meanwhile, even an incomplete list of settlements of Yezdistan (a territory in the north of Iraq), where Turkish vandals slaughtered Yezidis, is quite impressive: Sinjar, Sinoun, Gobal, Dgour, Gali Ali Bage, Dhok, Zorava, Karse and Bare, Siba, Tlizer, Tlzafe, Khrbade Kavala, Grzark, Rmbousi, Sharok, Tlkazar, Tlbanta, Kocho, Khotmi, Mosoul, Rndavan, Amadia. Over 200,000 Yezidis were slaughtered in these settlements.

Yezidis were also destroyed by Turkish soldiers on the territory of Western Armenia, where they had been living in harmony with Armenians for ages. Below is the mournful list: Van region — 100,000 innocent victims; Moush region — over 60,000 victims; Erzroum region — 7,500 victims; Kars region — 5,000 victims, Sourmalu — 10,000 Yezidi victims… The list is never-ending and tragic.

Side by side with deportation and massacre, the Turkish government forcibly turned Yezidis, who profess original religion connected with worship of the Sun, into Islam. The Turkish historiographer Katib Tchelebi states that in 1915-1918 about 300,000 Yezidis were massacred on the territory of the Ottoman Empire. However, according to verified data in those years over 500,000 Yezidis were slaughtered by Turkish and Kurd barbarians, and this sinister fact has not been condemned by the progressive countries of the world.

Undoubtedly, politicians and specialists must know how many Yezidis became the victims of the Turkish state in various settlements.

Before the beginning of World War I, over 750,000 Yezidis resided on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, and over 500,000 of them were massacred by Turks. 250,000 more were forcibly deported and found shelter:

1. in Iraq, in the vicinity of Sinjar Mountain, 100,000.
2. in Turkey, in the regions of Batman and Diarbeqir, 12,000.
3. in Syria, in the settlement of El-Kamishli, 15,000.
4. in Armenia, 12,500.
5. in Georgia, 3,000.

Nowadays the Yezidi people who are scattered in the whole territory of Northern Asia and Near East require the reestablishment of justice and recognition of events of 1915-1918 as Genocide. We are convinced that a failure to defy historic crimes against mankind will inevitably result in a precedent for new crimes. Actually, it is already taking place. In August and September of 2007 when over a thousand of innocent Yezidis, peaceful inhabitants of the region, were destroyed in the north of Iraq, in historical Yezdistan.

We appeal to the U. N., the U. N. Security Council, Presidents of the U. S. and Russia, heads of the European states, President of Turkey and urge:  To restore historical justice and condemn the genocide of Yezidi people, which took place in the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1918.

Sources:
Kurd.net (March 10, 2008).  The Unknown Turkish Genocide of Turkish Yezidis. http://www.ekurd.net/mismas/articles/misc2008/3/turkeykurdistan1735.htm  The article gives its primary source the entry “Armenian Genocide” in Wikipedia.  Much of the same material was also distributed in a news release by the National Union of Yezidis of the World (March 11, 2008).

Kurd.net also brings the following explanatory material from the National Union of Yezidis of the World:

The Yazidi (Yezidi, Kurdish) are adherents of the smallest of the three brances of Yazdanism, a Middle Eastern religion with ancient Indo-European roots.  The Yazidis are mostly ethnic Kurds, and are primarily Kurdish-speaking, and most live in the Mosul region of northern Iraq.  There are traditional communities in Transcaucasia, Turkey, Syria and the west of Armenia.

Kurd.net continues with the following from www.armeniangenocide.com:
Kurds are not recognized as an official minority in Turkey and are denied rights granted to other minority groups.  Under EU pressure, Turkey recently granted Kurds limited rights for broadcasts and education in the Kurdish language, but critics say the measures do not go far enough.

The use of the term “Kurdistan” is vigorously rejected due to its alleged political implications by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize the existence of a “Turkish Kurdistan” Southeast Turkey.
There are those estimates that over 40 million Kurds live in Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia), which covers an area as big as France.

Turkey is home to 25 million ethnic Kurds, a large Turkey’s Kurdish community openly sympathize with the Kurdish PKK for a Kurdish homeland in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast of Turkey.

Before August 2002, the Turkish government placed severe restrictions on the use of Kurdish language, prohibiting the language in education and broadcast media. The Kurdish alphabet is still not recognized in Turkey, and use of the Kurdish letters X, W, Q which do not exist in the Turkish alphabet has led to judicial persecutions in 2000 and 2003.

The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan but unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag is banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it is a criminal offence.”