IDENTITY PERCEPTIONS OF ALEVI AND EZIDI KURDS IN THE CONTEXT OF FOLK NARRATIVES

Abstract

Religion and beliefs are curcial elements in the construction of the collective identity and in some periods of history communities takes them as basis to define themselves. Although there are general debates on kurdish identity within the kurdish society, the existence of some ethno- religious groups and their self-definition deepens the debate on kurdish identity in general and reveals the debate on their identity perceptions. When we look at the historical course of these discussions, it seems that this issue has never carried out entirely in the light of scientific criteria, both on the social level and on the level of researchers’ definitions. In this context, the kurdish alavi community and the yazidi communities are two important examples of the concreteness of this debate. As an additional contribution to this debate, we will regard a look into folklore texts, where the concept of the society appears before us, and this shows the objective tendencies of that social group.