 Tunar Rahmanoghly singing Kurdish song "Rinda Min".Khari Bulbul Music Festival | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| Official: 6,100[1] Estimate: 70,000[2] | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Lachin District,Kalbajar District,Qubadli District,Zangilan District,Sharur District,Babek District,Kangarli District | |
| Languages | |
| Kurdish (Kurmanji),Azerbaijani | |
| Religion | |
| MajorityShia Islam, MinorityYezidism[3] | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Iranian peoples |
TheKurds in Azerbaijan form a part of the historically significantKurdish population in thepost-Soviet space.Kurds established a presence in theCaucasus with the establishment of the KurdishShaddadid dynasty in the 10th and 11th centuries,[4] SomeKurdish tribes were recorded inKarabakh by the end of the sixteenth century.[4] However, virtually the entire contemporary Kurdish population in the modernAzerbaijan descends from migrants from 19th-centuryQajar Iran.[4]
According to Russian and later Soviet ethnographer Grigory Chursin, another wave of Kurdish immigration in western parts of modern Azerbaijan may have taken place in 1589, at the time of theOttoman–Safavid War, when "victorious Safavid soldiers" chose to stay in the conquered lands.[5]Safavids resettled Shi'a Kurds where borders of the historical regions ofKarabakh andZangezur met.[6] In the eighteenth century, many Kurdish tribes had formed tribal unions with Azeris in Karabakh lowlands.[7] Nineteenth-century Russian historian Peter Budkov mentioned that in 1728, groups of Kurds andShahsevans engaged in semi-nomadic cattle-breeding in theMughan plain applied for Russian citizenship.[8]
In 1807, amidst theRusso-Persian War over the South Caucasus, a tribe chief by the name of Mehmed Sefi Sultan moved fromPersian to theKarabakh khanate followed by 600 Kurdish families. By the second half of the nineteenth century, Kurds were found in large numbers in the uyezds ofZangezur,Javanshir andJabrayil.[5] In 1886, they constituted 4.68% of the population of theElisabethpol Governorate.[9] Small populations of Kurds were also found in the uyezds ofNakhchivan,Sharur-Daralagoz andAresh.[10] Mass migration of Kurds from Persia and to a lesser degree from theOttoman Empire[11] into mountainous regions of present-day Azerbaijan continued all throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth century, until 1920 when Azerbaijan became part of theSoviet Union. The Kurdish population of the South Caucasus was prone to internal immigration. In the 1920s, a number of Kurds from Azerbaijan relocated to Armenia where they settled mainly in theAzeri-populated regions,[5] which led the Kurdish population of Azerbaijan to significantly decrease in numbers.[12]
Common religion (unlike the majority of Kurds, Kurds of Azerbaijan are predominantlyShi'a Muslim like most Azeris)[3] and shared elements of culture led to rapid assimilation of Azerbaijan's Kurdish population already by the end of the nineteenth century. Statistical data from 1886 shows that Kurds ofJabrayil,Arash and partlyJavanshir spokeAzeri as a first language. According to the first Soviet census of 1926, only 3,100 (or 8.3%) of Azerbaijan's Kurdish population (which at the time numbered 37,200 people) spoke Kurdish.[10]
A well-integrated community, Kurds were represented in the government of the shortly independentDemocratic Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918–1920, among themNurmammad bey Shahsuvarov who served as Minister of Education and Religious Affairs andKhosrov bey Sultanov, Minister of the Military and Governor General of Karabakh and Zangezur.[13]
After the establishment of the Soviet rule in Azerbaijan, the Central Executive Committee of theAzerbaijan SSR created in 1923 an administrative unit known asRed Kurdistan in the districts ofLachin,Qubadli andZangilan, with its capital in Lachin.[14] According to the 1926 census, 73% of its population was Kurdish and 26% was Azeri.[15] In 1930 it was abolished and most remaining Kurds were progressively recategorized asAzerbaijani.[16] In the 1930s, a traditional Kurdish puppet theatrekilim arasi inAghjakand and a Kurdish Pedagogical College in Lachin still functioned.[5] Soviet authoritiesdeported most of the Kurdish population of Azerbaijan and Armenia toKazakhstan in 1937, and Kurds ofGeorgia in 1944.[17]
Kurds continued to assimilate into the dominant culture of the neighbouring Azeris.[18] Historically mixed Azeri-Kurdish marriages were commonplace. Due to the Azerbaijani language being dominant and most Kurds in Azerbaijan being linguistically assimilated, the Kurdish language was rarely passed on to the children in such marriages.[10]
Starting from 1961, when theFirst Iraqi–Kurdish War started, there were efforts by the deportees for the restoration of their rights - spearheaded byMehmet Babayev; these proved to be futile.[19]
During theperestroika era in the 1980s, there was a resurgence in the nationalist aspirations of Soviet Kurds, leading to the formation of theYekbûn organization in 1989, which aimed to reestablish Kurdish autonomy. The government of the USSR underGorbachev attempted to help the Kurds, but aspirations for an autonomous Kurdish state within the Soviet Union failed after the 1991 collapse of the USSR and significant hostility to the plan byTurkey.[20]
TheFirst Nagorno-Karabakh War between Armenia and Azerbaijan spilled across the region ofNagorno-Karabakh into the traditionally Kurdish populated areas in both of these countries.In the late 1980s 18,000 Kurds left from Armenia to Azerbaijan.[21] In 1992–1993, Armenian troops advanced into Kalbajar, Lachin, Qubadli and Zangilan, forcing the non-Armenian civilian population out.[22] As much as 80% of the Kurdish population of those regions settled in IDP camps inAghjabadi.[23]
Nonetheless, in 1992, after the capture ofLachin by Armenian forces during theFirst Nagorno-Karabakh War, a new organization, the "Caucasian Kurdistan Freedom Movement", led byWekîl Mustafayev, declared the establishment of theKurdish Republic of Lachin on the former territory of Red Kurdistan. However, by then the vast majority of the Kurdish population had fled on account of the war, hence this attempt failed and the ephemeral state dissolved itself the same year.[24] Mustafayev later took refuge in Italy.[25] Lachin then came under the administration of the Armenian-backedNagorno-Karabakh Republic.
As a result of the2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, Azerbaijan retook Kalbajar, Lachin, Qubadli and Zangilan.[26] According to the2020 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement, internally displaced persons and refugees shall return to the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.[27]
Estimates from the 1920s put the population of the Kurds in Azerbaijan at around 40 thousand.[28] Estimates in the 1990s varied from as low as 10 thousand[29] to as high as 200 thousand.[28]
| 1926[30] | 1939[31] | 1959[32] | 1970[33] | 1979[34] | 1989[35] | 1999[36] | 2009[37] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 41,193 | 6,005 | 1,487 | 5,488 | 5,676 | 12,226 | 13,100 | 6,100 |
| Asia |
|  | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Europe | ||||
| North America | ||||
