ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Armenian-Kurdish radio personality Kereme Seyad has died at the age of 83, leaving behind more than half a century worth of service to art and culture as presenter at the Kurdish section of Radio Yerevan.
Seyad was born in 1938 in Talin, a town in Armenia, to Kurdish refugees originally from the province of Kars, once part of Armenia and now a province in northeastern Turkey.
In 1960, he was invited to work at the Kurdish section of Radio Yerevan by Xelil Muradov, head of the station's Kurdish section at the time.
Seyad worked at the station for 55 years, as a presenter and then as head of the station. While he worked at the station, around 2,000 Kurdish songs were recorded at Radio Yerevan's studio and broadcast to Kurds in Armenia and the Middle East.
Prominent Kurdish artists whose songs were played and recorded at Radio Yerevan's studio include Aram Tigran, Karapate Xaco , and Egide Cimo.
Masoud Barzani, the former President of the Kurdistan Region said Seyad "worked tirelessly in order to develop the Kurdish language and literature" in a statement released Sunday.
"He led Radio Yerevan and played a great role in spreading Kurdish language and lexicon to Armenia and Soviet countries,” Barzani said.
“His effort serves as a model for every patriotic Kurd,” he added.
Radio Yerevan began broadcasting in Kurdish five years before Seyad's arrival. The first Kurdish words aired were “Yêrêvan xeber dide”, Yerevan speaks – still one of the station's most well-known phrases. The station connected Kurds at a time where the Kurdish language was threatened and frowned upon by oppressive regimes.
Renowned Kurdish singer Mazhar Xalqi told Rudaw English of his experience with the station.
“As a young boy, my two favorite radios were Yerevan and Baghdad," Xalqi said. "I would listen to them a lot and they shaped my youth.”
“Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, I visited them once and met with the staff.”
Seyad’s son Tital told Armenian news outlet EVN Report in 2019 that Turkey's pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) MP Osman Baydemir said "he had two mothers; one was his biological mother, and the second was Radio Yerevan" when he visited the station.
"That’s where he learned his language and got to hear Kurdish songs when it was prohibited in Turkey,” Tital said of Baydemir.
Miraze Cemal, a longtime friend of Seyad and second in command at Riya Teze newspaper where Seyad’s son is editor in chief, told Rudaw English that Seyad made Kurdish the only language spoken at his family's home – “even though all his neighbors were non-Kurds.”
While the Soviet Union dissolved and Armenia struggled economically, Seyad brought Tital and his daughter Leyle to work at the Kurdish section of Radio Yerevan to help prevent the station from closing down.
“The Soviet Union had dissolved and the Armenian government was not supporting the station anymore. While everyone else left, Kerem and his family kept the station alive,” Cemal said.
“Former president [of Armenia] Robert Kocharyan gave Kerem an honorary medal for 50 years of service at the time,” he added.
"Today we hold a ceremony to say our farewells, and we will bury him tomorrow in the village he was born," Tital told Rudaw's Hevidar Zana on Monday.
Additional reporting by Necmi Salih
