Are Yazidis Kurds? An honest answer

You get a different answer to this question in every Yazidi family. And no one stays calm while giving it. Anyone looking for a quick answer will be disappointed—not because anyone is being coy, but because the question itself has several layers that are constantly getting muddled in everyday life.

What is indisputable

Yazidis speak Kurmanji, the northern Kurdish dialect. Not as a learned second language, but as a mother tongue in which they pray, argue, and find comfort. For centuries, Yazidis and Muslim Kurds have lived in the same mountain regions in northern Iraq, southeastern Turkey, and Syria. The food is similar, the music is partly the same, and wedding customs overlap.

So, anyone asking whether Yazidis belong to the Kurdish sphere culturally and linguistically will get a clear answer: yes, obviously.

Why many say no anyway

The same neighbors with whom the language is shared were not always just neighbors. During the waves of persecution over the past centuries, it was not always someone from far away who showed up at the door. If you ask older Yazidis who came back then, you sometimes get names from next door.

And if you ask further, you get something else: names of people who issued warnings. Who hid them. Who did not betray them. Those, too, were the same neighbors.

Both things happened. One does not cancel out the other. Anyone who is only told one half of the story should be suspicious—whichever half it is.

The three answers that actually exist

Within the Yazidi community, there are essentially three opposing positions.

First: We are Kurds, and our religion is the oldest Kurdish religion—older than Islam in this region. In this interpretation, Yazidism is the original faith of a people who later largely converted to something else.

Second: We are a distinct people. We ended up with the same language because we lived in the same place—nothing more. Religion, lineage, and history are independent, and a common language does not create a common origin.

Third: The question only became important when someone stood to benefit from it. Those who count Yazidis as Kurds increase a political figure. Those who exclude them decrease it. In this view, the debate is less a question of identity than of statistics.

Why the question is so charged

For a small community, belonging is not an academic topic. It is one of the factors that determines who provides protection in an emergency, who speaks in parliament, and whose dead are counted. After 2014, this gained intensity, it did not lose it.

Added to this is something that is barely visible from the outside: the answer often cuts right across families. The father says one thing, the daughter says another, and both are serious.

What one can say with a clear conscience

That language and culture are closely related. That the religion is independent. That the question of the people is open within the community and is allowed to remain open. And that the only answer that no one can take away from a Yazidi is: I am Êzîdî.

Everything else is politics, and politics changes every twenty years.

Where to find more detail

This question is one of many that appear in ÊZÎDÎ — What we really believe. The book tells them not as an essay, but as a conversation between a sixteen-year-old and his grandmother—with a note at every delicate point where there are multiple answers.