YEZID CHILDREN “MISUSED” IN ARMENIA.

A crowd of “Kurdish” children, said by march organizers to number more than 1,000, demonstrated in central Yerevan on March 12 in support of Kurdish terrorist leader Abdullah Ocalan. The children, ranging from pre-schoolers to teenagers, carried portraits of Ocalan, signs with slogans reading “We are Ocalans” and flags of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The demonstration was officially authorized (Reuters, March 12).

The event highlights the attempts by some Armenian nationalist circles to incite Armenia’s 60,000-strong Yezid minority to support the PKK’s guerrilla war against Turkey. An attempt is being made in the process to change the Yezid ethnocultural identity (based on the Zoroastrian religion) to Kurdish. Pro-PKK and Kurdish nationalist propaganda among Armenia’s Yezid has been ushered in by last year’s change of regime in Armenia (see the Monitor, February 17).

COMMERCIAL AGREEMENT ON TURKMEN GAS SIGNED.