Exploring Armenian–Kurdish Relations in the Late Ottoman East through a Testimony of Yervant Kureghian

Using the untapped testimony of Armenian survivor Yervant Kureghian, I explore how overlooked forms of cooperation between villagers within the Armenian and Kurdish communities in Ottoman Van and the stories of everyday life before and after the Hamidian massacres of 1894-1896 suggest different patterns of engagement often missing from the history of Armenian-Kurdish relations. I concentrate on the Armenian survivor Kureghian’s oral testimonies and his written biography because it helps me not only to integrate the Armenians and Kurds into the provincial late Ottoman historiography but also to demonstrate the complex nature of nineteenth-century intercommunal relations and shifting alignments as the result of the Ottoman state’s policies of centralization and internal colonization of the Ottoman East.

Rather than talking about the collective Kurdishness, where religious/sectarian and class differences are reduced to an abstract category, Kureghian consistently highlights the significant influence that the socio-economic status of the Kurds in the Van province had on their relationships with neighboring Armenians. When talking about the land disputes, lootings, and abductions of Armenians by the Kurds during the Hamidian massacres of 1895, Kureghian would differentiate between certain Kurdish tribal chiefs, who were the leading cause of systematic violence and oppression not only against Armenians in the village but also the socio-economically disadvantaged Kurdish villagers. While the ethnic and religious boundaries between Armenian, Turkish, and Kurdish communities played an important role, Kureghian’s narrative indicates the not less important role that the socio-economic status played in forming cooperation between the Kurdish and Armenian villagers in Van’s Hayotc Dzor region.