More than a century years ago Talât Pasha declared famously that in the Eastern Provinces “The Armenian question does not exist anymore”. Today, far from being resolved, the former binary coding (Armenian/Turkish) is even further complicated by a third element— the ongoing Kurdish question (doza Kurdistanê). While most research and journalistic works frame the Armenian issue and the Kurdish issue as two separate events that merely coincide(d) in the same geographical space, this work explores their interdependence and the historical trajectories of two peoples fatally “tied together” across a spatio-temporal scale.In my paper I identify two opposing lines of continuity through which both peoples are tied together: friendly and fatal ties. With regard to the first (friendly ties), I turn to the SSR Armenia and her role in fostering Kurdish culture and advancing Kurdish nationalism. Hereby, I argue that a marginalized community of Kurmanji-speakers—the Yezidis, previously othered as “devil-worshippers” (şeytanperest)— emerged as the vanguard in forging a novel, secularized Kurdish national identity. With regard to the latter (fatal ties), I link the irrevocable erasure of Ottoman Armenians to the emergence of an imagined “Northern Kurdistan” stretching over large parts of historic Armenia. This, finally, raises the question of Kurdish complicity in the Armenian Genocide—as state-mobilized regiments, tribal members and ordinary residents—in a geography where, as Recep Maraşlı put it, the descendants “are the children of both perpetrators and victims alike”.

Off to the other promised land: Western émigrés in the “first country of workers and peasants” At first glance, present-day Bishkek, the capital of Republic of Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, may seem like a typical representative of the (post-)Soviet city: prefabricated, modernist-style residential buildings along the old Sovyetskaya Boulevard (today named after the Soviet-Kirghiz politician Yusup Abdrakhmanov), extensive park areas, and a grid-like street network. Yet, as the Line 2 trolleybus leaves the hectic bustle of the Osh Bazaar on Den Xiaoping Avenue, an oddly tranquil world reveals itself to the visitor: one- and two-level residential buildings with gabled roofs, mullioned windows, and massive exterior walls are unmistakably reminiscent of a small town in Central Europe. The residential area, unofficially known among local residents as “Intergel'po” is made up of Intergel'po and Trudovaya Street, which run vertically from north to south, and six smaller alleys (Mozoleva, Kumarykskaya, Yanvarskaya, Livtinova, Dimitrovna and Kensuyskaya) that run from east to west. To the east, Intergel'po borders Fuchik Park—named after the Czech communist writer Julius Fučík—while to the east, it coalesces into a new settlement area.

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