The Identity of the Caucasian Yezidi in the Wake of the Sinjar Tragedy

Abstract

This article compares the social and identity development of the Yezidi communities in the southern Caucasus and in Iraq. It argues that since the 1990s, a Yezidi national identity that, first, borrows a number of elements from Armenia’s national-commemorative narrative and that, second, could take advantage of the relative opening of borders and of modern information and communication technologies has developed among the Caucasian Yezidi. With the old Yezidi core areas in northern Iraq under existential threat by armed conflict and displacement, this identity could become the new framework in which a modern Yezidi identity will be able to sustain itself.