First published in 1993. The Yezidis are a community of around 200,000 Kurds who possess their own religion, quite distinct from Islam, which most other Kurds profess, and from the Christian and Jewish faiths. The Yezidis live in the northern parts of Iraq and Syria, in eastern Turkey, in Germany and in the ex-Soviet republics of Armenia and Georgia. (In Armenia the Yezidis, long classified as Kurds, are now recognized as a separate minority group and the term 'Kurd' is applied only to Moslem Kurds.) This book stems from a conversation with the Yezidi priest of the village who remarked that now the children were learning to read and write they were asking him questions about the Yezidi scriptures and the history of the community. Lacking any written material, he could only repeat to them the oral traditions he had himself learned as a child.

Originally published in Armenian in 1972.

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Two vikings - one of whom is the formidable former Varangian Guard whose name is carved on a marble slab in Constantinople's Hagia Sophia - settle down in Kurdland, driven by different objectives. Though broken and defined by the opportunities and challenges imposed on them, they both long for recognition and affection. As their lives intertwine with the enchanting and virtuous doctor, Vesta, the successful Palace manager, Zara, and the newly coronated Kurdish King, Saaid, they try to deal with the inevitable trials of love and loss at a time when uncertainty continues to cloud their future. Well-researched and seductively charming, The Viking's Kurdish Love spans across continents, cultures, religions and decades of tumultuous regional and global history. Widad's lyrical prose sensuously immerses the reader in the thoughts and perspectives of the time while creatively weaving the themes of injustice, identity, impulsive decisions, traumas, survival, deprival and revival into the story of how the people of the era refuse to be trapped by their past experiences.

This volume deals with the experience and the position of non-tribal Jewish subjects and their relationships with their tribal chieftains (aghas) in urban centers and villages in Kurdistan. It is based on new oral sources, diligently collected and carefully analyzed.

Who Are the Kurds? The logical answer to this question from the Aryan language is the word 'Huart, ' which evolved through the Greek's 'Kurt' to 'Kurd.' General Baryaxes of the Medes or ancient Kurds was the first leader of the Kurdish peoples' defense forces to liberate the Aryan people from the rule of the Greeks. Listed among the forefather of the Caucasian or Aryan Kurds were the Sumerians, Elamites, Gutians, Hurrians, Mitanni, Kassites, Urartians, Mannaeans, Hittites, Lydians, Medians, Parthians, Sassanids and other unidentified Aryan tribes. After savaging the Median Empire with the help of Jewish conspirators, the Persian Darius son of Hystaspes savaged the Median Empire and established Achaemenid Empire. He then attempted to eliminate the Aryan Medes and Persian tribe by hiring a large number of Indian mercenaries, settling them in Persia and progressively marrying them to the Persian women and children who had survived the war. The modern Persian people are the descendants of these mercenaries, who allied with Jewish conspirators under the leadership of Darius, son of Hystaspes and his mother Rhodugune, the daughter of King Astyages of Media and Queen Esther of Judea. Although modern Persians still claim membership of the Aryan nation, in reality, they have been separated from it since the time of Darius, son of Hystaspes, whose slaughter of almost all the Zoroastrian religious Magi preachers of the Medes and the Persians in favor of Jewish priests weakened the Aryan culture immeasurably. Although this may seem an obscure and insignificant fact to non-Kurds, most educated Aryan Kurds and a large number of the Aryan people are aware of it, but may not know of the ideological and political consequences. Eventually, after 192 years of Darius son of Hystaspes and his descendants, King Alexander the Great from the African Greek nation, which opened the way for Arabs and Turks to take the Aryan lands later defeated the Achaemenid Empire After Alexander's war machine had entered Aryan territories, General Baryaxes led the remainder of the Median Army known as Huart (Kurd) against him. This resulted in the changing of the entire Aryan peoples' name to 'Kurd, ' which still means 'brave people who are defending people, ' a description that aptly fits the modern-day Kurdish freedom fighters or PKK. The name is still used interchangeably and is why the majority of Kurds who are proud to be linked to its bravery now call themselves PKK.

This is a work of excavation of the modern history of Turkey, with the Kurdish question at its center, unearthed and exposed in Çandar’s captivating narrative. The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey. The author weaves a fascinating account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow. Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, richly revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East.