Wladimir van Wilgenburg
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Influential Kurdish writer, intellectual, and radio personality Kereme Seyad, who played an important role in preserving Kurdish culture for decades, succumbed to illness on Saturday at the age of 83 in the Armenian capital of Yerevan.
He was born in 1938 in the Kurdish Yezidi village of Hako in Armenia’s Tallinn region and went on to complete his education at the University of Yerevan. He later became well-known as a writer for the Riya Teze newspaper and for his enthusiastic presence as the director of the Kurdish section of Radio Yerevan for almost forty years, starting in 1960.
Under his leadership, Radio Yerevan played an important role in keeping the Kurdish language and culture alive in Armenia, just as neighboring Turkish authorities to the west were implementing programs to suppress them.
As a result, untold numbers of Kurds tuned in to the popular radio station to listen to Kurdish music at the radio station that soon became a home for Kurdish singers exiled from Turkey.
One example was prominent Armenian Kurdish artist Egide Cimo, who also played an important cultural role in the region through Radio Yerevan.
When the Armenian government wanted to end the Kurdish broadcasting due to a financial crisis, Seyad and his children walked 12 kilometers every day in protest to prevent the closure.
“When I came to the radio on foot, I was thinking that (since) our Peshmerga (fighters) were walking to deserts, wars, and their homes, then I am going to walk to the radio,” he previously told Kurdistan 24 in an interview, adding that he was working toward “the unity and freedom of the Kurdish people.”
Although twelve other employees resigned from the radio station, Seyad continued to work there until just a few years ago.
Due to his sickness, however, Seyad handed over his work and legacy to his children and stopped showing up at the station he’d helped to define. Both his son Tital and his daughter Leyla have followed in his footsteps to work at Radio Yerevan.
“We were working with my father until 2014 when his health deteriorated, Tital Kereme told Kurdistan 24. “Since then, he has not been working and was at home.”
Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani said in a condolence statement released on Sunday that Seyad “worked tirelessly for many years to develop the Kurdish language and literature and in the management of the (Kurdish service of) Yerevan radio.”
“He has played an influential role in disseminating Kurdish dictionaries and language in Armenia and the former Soviet Union,” he continued. “The work and struggle of Kereme Seyad is an example for every patriotic Kurd.”
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in Turkey also offered condolences on his passing on social media.
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani on Saturday offered his own condolences to the families of both Sayed and a Kurdish academic and former HDP deputy, who recently died at a hospital in Turkey’s southeastern Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir (Amed).
Kereme Seyad will be buried in his native village of Hako on Tuesday.
Editing by John J. Catherine
https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/story/24179-Prominent-Kurdish-intellectual-in-Armenia-dies-at-83
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