According to historical evidence, the Kurds of the Caucasus, located between the Kura and Aras rivers, are the original inhabitants of that geography and are not immigrants. One of the historians who studied the Kurds of Caucasus in the 7th-10th centuries was Arshak Poladian. He has proved that the Caucasian Kurds are the original inhabitants of that geography. Russian, French, and Greek historians have proved that the Kurdish settlement in the Caucasus dates back at least 6000 years ago and the region was in control of the Kurds until 1827 when they had an empire. Until 1813, when the Treaty of Golestan was signed between Russia and Iran, the region was one of the regions that Iran gave to Russia.
Among the Kurds living in Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia, only the Kurds of Azerbaijan formed a unit administration and called it "Uyezdi Kurdistan" (Kurdistan district) led by Guji Qaji Ov in 1923 after the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia. This unit became known as Sor Kurdistan.
In Sor Kurdistan, Kurdish was taught and written in Cyrillic until the region was dissolved. However, Kurdish education in the Latin alphabet continued for a few years from 1932 onwards.
The decision to establish Sor Kurdistan was first announced on June 7, 1923, by the Commission for Determination of the Borders of Autonomous Karabakh and Kurdistan" as the following:
1. An autonomous Kurdistan must be established.
2. After the borders of the autonomous mountainous Karabakh have been determined, the center and borders of Kurdistan must also be determined.
On June 16, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, signed by its secretary Sargay Kirov, announced its decision to establish the Sor Kurdistan region.
"Sor" (Red) was the symbol of the Socialist Soviet Union. Red was a symbol of the strengthening of the army, so "Sor Kurdistan" meant "Soviet Kurdistan".
According to the 1925 data, this ethnic-administrative unit included six regions and 330 villages, with the entire population grouped in 63 village councils.
According to the first census of the Soviet Union in 1926, the population of this administrative unit was 51200 people, i.e., Kurds accounted for 73.1% of the total population, but Azeris made up 26.3% of the population. Armenians were only 256, which was 0.5%.
For example, in Karakshlag (99.7%), Kalbajar (99.8%), Quturli (99.9%), Kurdhaji (98.6%), and Muradkhanli (98.2%) of the population were Kurds. Only in Qubadli, the population of Azeris was (98.9%), followed by Armenians (1%) and no Kurdish population. Researchers believe that Qubadli was intentionally placed on the Kurdish population in order to reduce the Kurdish population from 100% to 73%.
The Red Kurdistan Republic was located in the northeast of the Greater Kurdistan map and was considered the fifth part of Greater Kurdistan. Sor Kurdistan became the separating part between Karabakh Region and Armenia.
The establishment of Soviet Kurdistan had been decided by the highest Soviet authority in Moscow and had to be implemented.
In the opinion of the owners of the idea, this unit should have become an important center for the dissemination of Bolshevik thought among Kurds outside the Soviet Union.
They also wanted to encourage the Kurds of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, then under British and French rule, to support the Soviet regime and revolt against their invaders by establishing the Red Kurdistan Region.
However, the good relations between the Soviets and Kemalists in Turkey, and later the friendship with Reza Shah in Iran, caused Moscow to ignore the pursuit of this policy, and its expectations of "Red Kurdistan" were reduced.
This was a golden opportunity that the Azerbaijani authorities were waiting for an opportunity to eliminate something called Kurdistan on that territory.
Official Kurdish institutions in the city of Shushe were outside the Kurdistan borders, because the Kurdistan capital (Lachin), which was formerly a village called Avdalyar, had no suitable buildings and places to house government institutions.
In Azerbaijan, the Kurds were not allowed to go abroad and continue their studies. This policy of the Azerbaijanis forced the Kurdish population to migrate to the Soviet Union and other parts of the world every year. Therefore, the Kurdish population decreased and the Azeris' Population increased every year.
Finally, the Azerbaijani authorities took advantage of a Moscow decree to reorganize the administrative structure of the Soviet republics and erased the name of Kurdistan from the map of Azerbaijan.
In 1930, the high party and state officials in Moscow approved the decision.
Following this, the policy of Azerbaijaniization of the Kurds began immediately. What facilitated this policy was that Kurds and Azeris were of the same religion. Some Kurds had become Azeri-speaking even at the time of the establishment of the Kurdistan Uyezdi. Also, they were socially divided into several tribes, which made the work of the Azerbaijani authorities much easier.
In 1937-1938, some Kurds were forcibly migrated to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan from Azerbaijan and Armenia.
In 1944, they were forcibly deported from Georgia to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan too.
After 1929 and the collapse of the Red Kurdistan Region until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kurdish politicians and intellectuals met with many senior leaders of the Communist Party and called for the re-establishment of the Kurdistan Region, but unfortunately their efforts were unsuccessful.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, especially after the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the Caucasian Kurds were attacked by Armenian, Azerbaijani, and Georgian nationalists and scattered among the former Soviet republics, Europe, the United States, and Australia.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia (at which time 20000 Kurds had left Armenia), on May 15, 1992, the People's Army Party came into power in Azerbaijan and decided to leave the Lachin region without a fight. When they left Lachin, Kurdish politicians and intellectuals moved to the Lachin region and founded the Kurdistan Freedom Movement on June 9 and the Red Kurdistan Region on June 10, led by Vakil Mustafayev, with 19 executive members. The region, whose capital was Lachin, included several cities such as Kalbajar, Gubadli, Jibrail, and Zangila.
The Kurds were then asked to return to their homeland. Unfortunately, there was a conflict among the members of the board of directors of the Unity Association, which was one of the most powerful Kurdish organizations of the time. The struggle was that some of the board members of the Unity Association said that they would accept autonomy if Azerbaijan gave it to them, but they did not want it if Armenia gave it to them. The members of the Unity Committee appear to have been Muslim Kurds, not Yezidi Kurds. They meant that the Azeris are Muslims and we believe in them, not the Armenians. Religiously, the Kurds of Azerbaijan were Shiite Muslims, but the Kurds of Armenia and Georgia, except a minority of Sunni Muslims, were Yazidi.
Vakil Mustafayev also considered the opposition of PKK with the establishment of the Red Kurdistan and the receipt of weapons and money from the Azerbaijani state as another reason for the deterioration of the Kurdistan Region.
Despite Armenia's agreement to establish the region, unfortunately, due to the conflict and the Kurds did not return to their country, they lost this golden opportunity and all the efforts of Vakil Mustafayev and his friends were in vain.
Reference:
-"Kurds of Soviet Azerbaijan: The Story of the Extermination of a National Minority" Jabar Qadir
- Book "Red Kurdistan" by Harun Yilmaz, İsmet Sherif Wanli, Daniel Muller
- Interview of Rudaw with Vakil Mustafayev
- Rudaw documentary about Sor Kurdistan
-Wikipedia
