ARMENIAN KURDS TO VOTE FOR SERZH SARKISIAN

YEREVAN, DECEMBER 12, ARMENPRESS:Prominent members of Armenian Kurdish community have called today on fellows to vote for prime minister Serzh Sarkisian when they will go to the polls on February 19 to elect a president. “We, the Kurds, as full citizens of Armenia, shall cast out ballots in favor of Serzh Sarkisian, who was spearheading for years virtually all force agencies of the country and is very well aware of its domestic and external challenges. The problems of national minorities have always been in his limelight,’ Knyaz Hasanov, chairman of the Armenian Kurdish National Council, told at a news conference today. Hasanov and another senior member of the Council said they hope that the February 19 election will be fair and transparent. Robert Kotikian from the Aragatsotn province, which has the largest Kurdish population in Armenia, said his fellows have decided to vote for Sarkisian because he shows respect to Kurds and Kurds respect him. Earlier representatives of the Yezidi and Jewish communities also said their fellows would vote for Serzh Sarkisian. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Armenia. In Soviet times there was an 80,000-strong Kurdish community in Armenia, but it began to dwindle as the Soviet Union began to collapse. Now there are over 40,000 Kurds in Armenia. The Kurdish people here are represented by two ethnic groups: the Muslim Kurds and the Yezidis, who has preserved their old religion. Up to the end of the 1980s the Yezidis were identified with the Kurds, but then Yezidis began to identify themselves as a different people.