Frederick Aprim@FredAprim
Zazas are NOT Kurds.
This issue of the Zaza people are Kurds ethnically was born from efforts by Kurdish nationalists in Turkiye from the 1980s to convince everyone that such was the case.
lets read the following sources:
1. Kurmanji (one of Kurdish languages) and Zaza are both Iranian languages, but few, if any, Kurmanji speakers understand Zaza.
Source: Martin van Bruinessen. The Ethnic Identity of the Kurds in Turkey.
2. The language of the Zaza, while a pure Iranian tongue, has little in common with Kurdish in grammatical construction and choice of words, and shows a few common features with the Guran and Lurish.
Source: E. B. Soane. Grammar of the Kurmanji or Kurdish Language.
3. Zaza leaders reject the Kurdish claims and emphasize linguistic, historical, and ancestral differences, pointing to the distinct origins of the Zaza language and the historical migration of their ancestors from the Daylam region of northern Iran.
4. The people who claim that Zazas are Kurds should answer: Are Kurds Turkmens?
Source: Jacques W. Redway. All Around Asia. p. 287
5. In general, the relationship between Kurdish and Median are not closer than the affinities between the latter and other North Western dialects — Baluchi, Talishi, South Caspian, Zaza, Gurani, etc."
Source: Garnik Asatrian. Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds.
6. Other scholars have traced how the attempted assimilation of Alevi religious practices to Turkishness sparked a counter-history by Kurdish intellectuals, leading to the politicization of Zaza- and Kurmanji-speaking Alevi groups (referring to Leezenberg 2003).
Source: Christopher Houston. Anthropology of Kurdistan. Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Sydney. Oxford Bibliographies series. 2017.
