Deniz Undav: Yazidi Identity and the Politics of Origin

Deniz Undav’s journey from Germany’s lower leagues to the World Cup reveals how media debates reduce a Yazidi footballer to questions of origin, identity and political belonging.

For a few minutes at the 2026 World Cup, Germany had a wonderfully simple problem: the ball had to go into the net. Then Deniz Undav came on. In his first two World Cup appearances, he scored three goals and provided two assists. Germany had found the man who could turn a match from the bench, and suddenly everyone wanted a piece of him.

Germany wanted his goals. Football wanted his underdog story. Turkish nationalists wanted an explanation. Kurdish nationalists wanted a symbol. Yazidis were apparently allowed to be proud, provided we accepted somebody else’s caption beneath the photograph.

Germany almost missed him

Born in Germany to a Yazidi family with roots in Turkey and Syria, Deniz Undav was released by Werder Bremen as a youth player and spent years outside elite football. When larger German clubs failed to recognise what he could become, he went to Belgium, where Royale Union Saint-Gilloise gave him the stage for his breakthrough.

From Belgium, his path led to Brighton, Stuttgart and the German national team. The player German football once overlooked eventually scored for Germany at the World Cup.

Why can he not simply play football?

Why do reporters keep asking Deniz Undav to explain his identity? Why must a professional footballer repeatedly position himself between Turkish, Kurdish and Yazidi claims when his actual job is to play football?

Undav has been asked about his origins and identity again and again. At the time of writing, entering his name into Google brings up the autocomplete suggestion “Herkunft”. Search suggestions change and are not an objective verdict, but they reflect what people repeatedly want to know. In his case, origin seems to generate almost as much curiosity as his work as a professional footballer.

Questions about biography can be legitimate. But when the same question follows a player from interview to interview, it stops being simple curiosity. It turns him into a permanent spokesman for an identity conflict he did not create. His goals become the introduction, while his ancestry becomes the subject. Why is “I play for Germany” not enough? Media criticism begins exactly here: with the decision to treat a person’s origin as the real story and his achievement as background.

A Turkish first name does not settle an ethnic question

There is something almost comical about the way names are treated in identity debates. Deniz means sea in modern Turkish and is used for both men and women. The word has older Turkic roots and is related to forms such as teŋiz, also referring to a large body of water or the sea.

His surname is more difficult. Undav is extremely rare and its original meaning is not securely documented. One interpretation preserved through oral reasoning connects it to the Ezdikî phrase li avê de hunda bû, meaning “he was lost in the water”. In that reading, hunda and av may have formed Hundav and later Undav. Without the family’s oral history or archival records, this remains a hypothesis rather than a proven etymology.

A Turkish first name can tell us something about the country, language and bureaucracy in which a family lived. It cannot decide a person’s ethnicity. Yazidis from Turkey often carry Turkish names. Yazidis from Arabic speaking regions may carry Arabic names. Yazidis from Armenia may carry Armenian or Russian forms. A name is evidence of history, contact and circumstance, not a certificate of national ownership.

Kurdish identity and Yazidi faith

Undav has publicly described himself as Kurdish and Yazidi. Before Euro 2024, when a reporter referred to his Turkish roots, he corrected the description with the words: “First of all, I am Kurdish.” That is his description of himself, and he has the right to it. We also have the right to disagree with the broader historical formula that treats Kurdish ethnicity and Yazidi religion as the only possible interpretation of Yazidi identity.

The problem begins when one person’s description of himself is converted into a collective ruling on an entire people. Undav can say, “I am Kurdish and Yazidi.” Journalists, activists and nationalist accounts should not turn that sentence into: “Therefore all Yazidis are Kurds.” Personal identity is a right. Collective annexation is politics.

We have explained this distinction in “Don’t Make Fitna”: What Was Never One Cannot Be Split and We Are Yazidis: Our Identity Is Not a Political Reward.

Too Yazidi for some, useful enough for others

Undav has spent years being dragged into an argument he did not create. His public Kurdish identification and his decision to play for Germany have made him a target of Turkish nationalist hostility. When Stuttgart played Fenerbahçe in Istanbul on 23 October 2025, he was targeted during and after the match with insults including “traitor” and “terrorist”, anti Yazidi slurs and obscene chants about his mother. The abuse continued on social media. For some Muslims, the word Yazidi is already enough to trigger old religious slurs and hostility towards a non Muslim indigenous community.

Then there are Kurdish nationalist accounts that circulate Undav beneath Kurdish flags, including politically staged AI images, while similar online spaces mock or attack Yazidis who reject Kurdish identity. When Yazidis celebrated his success on social media, Kurdish users repeatedly posted AI generated images of him holding or standing beneath a Kurdish flag directly under Yazidi posts. The same users called Yazidis worshippers of evil in comment sections. Their intention is therefore difficult to misunderstand. This is not pride in Undav or solidarity with Yazidis. It is deliberate provocation.

They degrade Yazidi identity in one moment and use a successful Yazidi in the next, placing a Kurdish flag over him precisely where Yazidis are expressing joy and pride in one of their own. The Yazidi who accepts the preferred national label becomes a hero. The Yazidi who says, “I am simply Yazidi,” is dismissed as ignorant, divided, Arabised, manipulated or hostile.

Undav is celebrated not only because he succeeds, but because his personal formula can be displayed as evidence against Yazidis who define themselves differently. His goals become national property, his photograph becomes a flagpole and his individual biography becomes an argument intended to close a historical debate.

The uncomfortable question behind “original Kurds”

Many Yazidis raised in Europe inherited a familiar claim: Yazidis are the “original Kurds,” and Yazidism is the original religion of the Kurdish people. It is a politically satisfying sentence, but it deserves far more scrutiny than it usually receives.

If Yazidis are supposedly the purest or oldest expression of Kurdish identity, why have Yazidi communities repeatedly had to defend their religion, dignity and right to define themselves against Kurdish political and religious actors? Why are Yazidis praised as ancient when useful, but insulted as backward when they resist?

The Geli Ali Beg waterfall in the Kurdistan Region bears the name of the Yazidi prince Mîr Elî Beg, who was killed there in 1833 on the orders of the Kurdish ruler Mîr Muhammad of Rawanduz after refusing to convert. The Kurdish naming of the valley preserved his murder as a memorial directed at the Yazidis, but also as a warning. Its message belongs to a historical language of threat that remains recognisable today: this is what happens to Yazidis who refuse submission.

Some nationalist narratives also try to reinterpret Yazidism as a surviving form of Zoroastrianism, even though Yazidi theology, sacred tradition and self understanding cannot simply be reduced to another ancient religion. Calling Yazidis the “original Kurds” can sound like admiration. But admiration becomes appropriation when it refuses Yazidis the right to answer for themselves.

Assimilation can look like certainty

Was Deniz Undav deliberately assimilated? We do not know enough about his private education, religious knowledge or family conversations to state that as fact.

What we can say is that he grew up in the same European information environment as many Yazidis of his generation: far from the institutions that once transmitted Yazidi religious knowledge, surrounded by stronger national narratives, and often presented with the formula “Kurdish ethnicity, Yazidi religion” as though no serious alternative existed. Many young Yazidis inherited identity without receiving equal access to history, Qewls, theology or independent Yazidi scholarship. Political organisations had publications, media, slogans, flags and trained activists. Yazidi knowledge often arrived in fragments through parents and grandparents. One side had an infrastructure. The other had memory.

We discuss that imbalance more fully in Who Are the Yazidis? And Why Does Misinformation Persist?. We cannot diagnose Undav from a press conference. But we can hope that one day, between matches, interviews and the demands of professional football, he reads beyond the slogans he inherited. Not because he must reach our conclusion, but because a conclusion is worth more when it has survived difficult sources and uncomfortable questions.

The hand he could still extend

Undav’s family history connects him to Yazidis from Turkey, a community reduced by persecution, pressure and emigration to a fraction of its former presence. That gives him a rare position.

He could become more than another footballer forced to answer the endless Turkish and Kurdish question. He could speak directly as a Yazidi from this history and insist that recognition of Yazidis does not require hostility towards Turkey, just as dialogue with Turkish society or the Turkish state does not require surrendering Yazidi identity. He could say that Yazidis from Turkey belong to the history of that country and deserve visibility, protection and respect in their own name.

He could extend a hand without becoming anyone’s propaganda. That would be harder than repeating the labels already rewarded in nationalist circles. It would also matter more.

We were standing behind him

If pride could be measured, I would say that 99.99999 percent of Yazidis were proud of Deniz Undav. That is not a statistic. It is what the moment felt like.

I have not met a single Yazidi who did not celebrate him or feel that something of his victory also belonged to us. Undav stood on the pitch and played, but we were all standing behind him. A large part of the German public stood behind him too. In that moment, he was our light. Whatever anyone thinks of Germany’s final result at the World Cup, our hearts were with Undav.

That pride is real, but pride does not require silence. My final wish for him is simple: do not allow yourself to become an instrument for those who celebrate a successful Yazidi while working to erase Yazidi identity.

This is not an abstract fear. Yazidi history contains repeated persecution by rulers, armed forces and religious authorities from the surrounding power structures. Today, political forces that define Yazidis without listening to them still dominate many of our historical settlement areas.

As a Yazidi voice with roots in Turkey, Undav could use his presence to encourage positive change there. He could make Yazidis from Turkey visible in their own name and help build a bridge without surrendering us to either side of the Turkish and Kurdish conflict. The position he has chosen instead risks placing him once again on the outside, not because he is Yazidi, but because his personal identity is used to serve a national claim imposed on other Yazidis as though it were unquestionable.

We are still proud of him and wish him every success. We simply hope he remembers that the people standing behind him do not need another flag placed over their heads.

Deniz Undav belongs to himself. Yazidi identity belongs to Yazidis.