CAUCASIAN KURDS (AZERBAIJAN)(2025)

The Kurdish presence in Azerbaijan dates back to the Daysem Kurdish State, which established the Azerbaijani city of Barda as its capital in the 9th century, and to the Shaddadi Kurdish State, centered in Ganja, in the 10th century. On July 16, 1923, the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party decided to establish a Kurdistan district in the lands where Kurds lived in large numbers and constituted 72.2% of the population (99.5% of the population in Kalbajar province and 99.2% in Lachin province were Kurds). The region, known as Red Kurdistan, consisted of the cities of Kalbajar, Qubadli, Zangılan, and Jabrail, with Lachin as its capital. Red Kurdistan was established in 1923 as an autonomous region within Azerbaijan within the Soviet Union, in accordance with the right of nations to self-determination. The autonomous region existed from 1923 to 1929. The territory between Armenia and Karabakh was among the territories occupied by Armenia during the 1992 war.
During Stalin's reign, assimilation policies against ethnic minorities began to be implemented in every republic. Efforts to educate Kurds were curtailed, and schools were closed. The weekly newspaper;"Şura Kurdistanı"; (Shura Kurdistan), which had been published in Azerbaijani in Lachin, Azerbaijan SSR, since 1932, ceased publication in 1937. The use of the word "Kurd" was unofficially censored in magazines and newspapers. The establishment of schools teaching Azerbaijani for Azerbaijani Kurds played a major role in their transition from Kurdish to Azerbaijani. Like many Caucasian peoples, the Kurds were deported from the Nakhchivan Autonomous Region of Azerbaijan and Armenia to Kazakhstan, the Central Asian republics, and Siberia in 1937. No one was deported from Red Kurdistan. As a result of the Azerbaijanization policy, which began in the 1930s and was supported by the Republic of Turkey, the development of national consciousness among the Kurds was hindered. The Kurdish population, having merged with the Muslim community in Azerbaijan, accepted themselves as Azerbaijanis and assimilated. From 1938 to 1990, no Kurdish books were published in Azerbaijan. After the collapse of the Soviet
Union, the establishment of the "Ronahi" Kurdish Cultural Center (1990), the launch of the newspapers "Dengê Kurd" (1992) and "Diplomat Kurd" (2003), and the granting of a 15-minute radio broadcast twice a week on Azerbaijani state radio (1993) all contributed to a slight revival in Kurdish cultural life in Azerbaijan. Today, the Kurds in Azerbaijan number approximately 150,000-250,000, most of whom live in the
Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic, the cities of Baku, Ganja, and Lachin, and surrounding settlements. They have the right to receive education in their own language.