During the 1960s, there wasn’t anyone in Kurdistan who knew Turkish except for the men who had completed their compulsory military service. And they would speak a very half-baked Turkish. They spoke Turkish only inasmuch as was enough for basic communication. We were far away from the Turkish culture. We couldn't find any pleasure in their songs, instruments or theatre plays. In the evenings, we would gather in the houses of notable people in our villages, sit before the radio and tune in to the Yerevan radio. Just as the English have “tea time,” we had our “Yerevan radio time.” Until the broadcast ended, our elders would scold anyone who made any noise: naughty kids, women who were touched by listening to the songs and moved to tears, and the sick who would cough too much…

Unfortunately, the news stories that were broadcast were too distant to our reality, lives and daily concerns. They would usually be about Armenia and the Soviet Union. If once a year a story about the Northern Kurds was broadcast, it would become the talk of the day among people and would spread. The generations before ours had seen the First World War, the forced migration. Due to the provocations of the Great Powers, a blinding nationalism, and the backwardness and ignorance of Kurds and Armenians, the two had killed a lot from one another. Especially during the forced migration, there was nobody left in the Kurdish villages of the Serhat region other than the old, the sick and the disabled. The killing of people caused the emergence of a great hatred in the hearts of Kurds against Armenians. The Armenians in the Russian army became the stick to beat the Young Turks, and they caused the deaths of many impeccable and innocent Kurds, who were killed with the intent of vengeance and died because of other Kurds that knew nothing of the national struggle.

As far as I am concerned the Yerevan radio made a great contribution to the closure of this wound. Thanks to this radio station, Armenians and Armenia started to appear much more likable to the Kurds than Ankara and [its] arrogant, powerful men. In terms of art, the instruments used in Yerevan radio were adopted in Kurdish music. The Serhat dialect of Kurdish became known, heard and recognized in the South too. To conclude, if today there is affinity among Kurds towards the Armenian people, the Yerevan radio played a great part in it. Other states, which spent billions of dollars for propaganda purposes failed to create the same impact on Kurds as the Yerevan radio.

– Mamoste Marûf