Garnik Asatrian

Asatrian was born on March 7, 1953, in Tehran, and immigrated to Yerevan in 1968. In 1976, he graduated from the Department of Kurdish Studies at the Iranian Studies Branch of Yerevan State University.

From 1977 to 1986, he was a PhD student and then a senior lecturer at the Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Soviet Sciences in Leningrad in the field of ancient Iranian culture and languages (Avestan, Sogdian, Pahlavi, Persian, Kurdish, and Iranian ethnology). Asatrian earned a doctorate from the University of Leningrad in 1984 and an excellent doctorate in 1990 from the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow.[3]

He has drawn together 11 books and more than 125 scientific articles in Armenian, Russian, English, German, French, Turkish, and Kurdish languages.[4] From 1985 to 1999 he was a professor at the University of Copenhagen and participated in various international conferences in Berlin, Moscow, Copenhagen, Oslo, Aarhus, New York, London, Washington, Tehran, and Paris.

One of the best and effective works of Asatrian is "The Cultural Dictionary of Persian Etymology", which is written in Persian and contains all the original Iranian words with transcription. He is the founder of two magazines, Irannameh (A newspaper published in the USA in Persian language) and Acta Kurdica.[5][6]

In a 1998 interview with Onnik Krikorian, Asatrian claimed that no Kurdish nation existed due to the linguistic and religious diversity among them.[7] He moreover claimed that no discrimination of Muslim Kurds and Yazidis existed in Armenia[7] which contradicts the findings of a United States Department of State report from the same year based on the complaints of Yazidi leaders.[8]

Researcher and expert on Yazidis, Artur Rodziewicz, argued that it was difficult to not consider the divergent opinion of Asatrian on Kurds, Yazidis and the relationship between the two groups as politically motivated arising from 'the Armenians' attitude towards... Kurds.'[9]

In an interview with Golos Armenii in December 2006, Asatrian stated that:[10]

The creation of a Kurdish state - whether on the territory of Turkey or Iraq - is a great threat to our national interests. Attempts are now being made to dismember Iraq and create a Kurdish state on its territory, which will become a front structure for the West. It should be taken into account that if some constructive dialogue is possible with modern Turkey - an established state aspiring to the European Union, then the Kurdish massif is an unpredictable and uncontrollable element, and unambiguously anti-Armenian. And there can be no illusions on this score.

He reiterated this belief to Golos Armenii in November 2009 and further stated that: "Our [Armenian] society and some political circles clearly underestimate the role of the Kurdish factor in the past and its danger in the future."[11]

• Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds, by Garnik Asatrian. This article appeared in the journal Iran and the Caucasus 13(2009), pp. 1–58.
• The Origins of the Kurds and the Early Kurdish-Armenian Contacts, by Garnik Asatrian, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 5 (2001), pp. 41–74, in 35 pdf pages.
• The Origins of the Kurds and Early Armenian-Kurdish Contacts, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 1 (1997), pp. 1–16
• Encyclopaedia Iranica: Dimli (or Zaza), by Garnik Asatrian
• Malak-Tāwūs: The Peacock Angel of the Yezidis, by Garnik Asatrian and Victoria Arakelova, in 37 pdf pages. From Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 7, No. 1/2 (2003), pp. 1–36.
• The Yezidi Pantheon, by Garnik Asatrian and Victoria Arakelova, in 50 pdf pages. From Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 8, No. 2 (2004), pp. 231–279.
• The Holy Brotherhood: The Yezidi Religious Institution of the 'Brother and the Sister of the Next World', by Garnik Asatrian. From Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 3/4 (1999/2000), pp. 79–96
• The Foremother of the Yezidis, from Religious Texts in Iranian Languages, Symposium held in Copenhagen May 2002, published 2007, pp. 323–328
• Introduction to the History and Culture of the Talish People, edited by Garnik Asatrian (Erevan, 2011)
• On the South Caspian Contact Zone: Some Talishi Folk Beliefs, by Garnik Asatrian and Victoria Arakelova, from Iran and the Caucasus 18 (2014) pp. 135–146
• Armenian Tracing Back an Old Animal-Breeding Custom in Ancient Armenia, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 2 (1998), pp. 63–65
• "The Mothers of Night": An Armenian - East Iranian Parallel, by Garnik Asatrian and Tork Dalalian, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 3/4 (1999/2000), pp. 171–172
• Iranian Miscellanea, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 3/4 (1999/2000), pp. 203–208
• The Origin of the -ng Suffix in Kurmandji, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 3/4 (1999/2000), pp. 213–214
• A Manual of Iranian Folk Magic in the Archive of the Caucasian Centre for Iranian Studies in Yerevan, by Garnik Asatrian and Victoria Arakelova, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 3/4 (1999/2000), pp. 239–242
• Āl Reconsidered, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 5 (2001), pp. 149–156
• Blunt, Bald and Wise: Iranian kund (-), by Garnik Asatrian and Victoria Arakelova, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 5 (2001), pp. 201–206
• The Lord of Cattle in Gilan, from Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 6, No. 1/2 (2002), pp. 75–85.
• Kurdish Lō-lō, from Iran and the Caucasus 10(2006).
• Iranian Notes III, from Iran and the Caucasus 13 (2009), pp. 319–330
• Some Notes on the Ethnic Composition of the Islamic Republic of Iran, from Farhang-e mardom (Tehran, 2011), pp. 10–26
• Marginal Remarks on the History of Some Persian Words, from Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012), pp. 105–116, in 12 pdf pages. Twenty Persian words are examined, for: mandrake; excrement; types of prostitutes; lord; spear; thigh; crippled; slack; fenugreek; a kind of stew; types of baldness; frog; head; a water plant; first-born child; a medical herb.
• The Festival of Throwing Stones, from Iran and the Caucasus 16 (2012) pp. 201–203.
• The Ethnic Composition of Iran: From the "Expanse of the Aryans" to the Myth of Azerbaijan, Yerevan Series for Oriental Studies, vol. 2, edited by Garnik S. Asatrian (Erevan, 2012)
• Armenian Demonology: A Critical Overview, from Iran and the Caucasus 17 (2013) pp. 9–25
• 'Nose' in Armenian, from Iran and the Caucasus 18 (2014), pp. 147–152
• Origine du système consonantique de la langue kurde, by Garnik Asatrian and Vladimir Livshits, from Acta Kurdica 1(1994), pp. 81–108
• A Comparative Vocabulary of Central Iranian Dialects, with notes on dialectology and local toponymy, and a grammatical essay by Garnik S. Asatrian (Teheran, 2011).[12][13][14]
• (with F. Vahman) Poetry of the Baxtiārīs: Love Poems, Wedding Songs, Lullabies, Laments, Copenhagen, 1995.

• Garnik Asatrian's biography