History UsefulNotes / Kurdistan

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in West Asia divided between UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} (Northern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} (Southern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} (Western Kurdistan) and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by Kurds, as the name implies. The Kurdish languages are part of the Indo-European family and belong to the Iranian subgroup, including Persian, Pashto, and Baloch. They have been a part of many Iranian empires throughout centuries, but they have their own separate culture and languages, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Despite this, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in Western Asia after Arabs, Persians and Turks.

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in Western Asia divided between UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} (Northern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} (Southern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} (Western Kurdistan) and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by Kurds, as the name implies. The Kurdish languages are part of the Indo-European family and belong to the Iranian subgroup, including Persian, Pashto, and Baloch. They have been a part of many Iranian empires throughout centuries, but they have their own separate culture and languages, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Despite this, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in Western Asia after Arabs, Persians and Turks.

Following several large scale Kurdish revolts in the 1920s and 1930s, Turkish Kurdistan was put under martial law and many Kurds were displaced, with the Turkish government also encouraging resettlement of Albanians from UsefulNotes/{{Kosovo}} and Assyrians in the region to change the make-up of the population. The Kurds weren't happy at Ankara for a long time after this, and the 1960 Turkish coup d'état halting their move towards integration in the Turkish government in the 1950's didn't help either. Eventually, the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê), also known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, was formed in the 1970s by Kurdish nationalists influenced by Marxist political thought, and has been involved in an armed struggle against the Turkish state since 1984 for cultural and political rights and self-determination for the Kurds, with open war between the PKK and Turkish military occurring from 1984 to 1999. During that period, the Turkish government banned anything that has the word "Kurd" in it, prohibited the Kurdish language, and committed human rights abuses. Restrictions were gradually relaxed come the TurnOfTheMillennium, with the media being allowed to broadcast in Kurdish and the language being allowed to be taught as an elective. Nevertheless, the central government is still repressive and the insurgency has not yet stopped.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, during the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, a civil war between the Arabs and Kurds broke out due to the regime's implementation of anti-Kurdish policies, which resulted in the al-Anfal Campaign: the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq by the government. The most infamous attack during this campaign was the incident in Halabja in 1988, which killed 5,000 civilians instantly. The Iraqis recaptured Iraqi Kurdistan after the collapse of its uprising in March 1991 and more than a million Kurds escaped to Turkey and Iran, with 20,000 dying in the process. Following UsefulNotes/TheGulfWar, the Kurds captured Erbil and Sulaymaniyah and established the Kurdistan Regional Government. After the fall of UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein, the situation improved more, with the central government recognizing the legality of the KRG and the presidency of Iraq (currently held by Sulaymaniyah-native Barham Salih) being given to the Kurds under a power-sharing agreement. Nowadays, the relationship between the Iraqi Kurds and Arabs are still chilly, but nowhere near as sub-zero as the time of Saddam. Iraqi Kurdistan is currently the only place in the world where the Kurds largely and legally govern themselves.

-->-- '''Abdullah Ocalan'''

The name "Kurd" is a Persian word and originally referred to any nomadic tribes inhabiting the Zagros Mountains. The ethnogenesis of the Kurds started in the late 1st millennium CE, around the time of UsefulNotes/{{Islam}}'s expansion into the Iranian Plateau. If you ask them, however, they claim that they are descendants of the Medes, an ancient Iranian people who built an empire in Northwest Iran around the 7th century BCE; their traditional calendar is even dated from 612 BCE, the year of the Median invasion of Assyria. There is no evidence to prove or disprove this claim, though the Median language was ''probably'' a sister language to Kurdish (as opposed to Persian, with which it was a cousin). As a whole, the Kurds are a heterogeneous nation with varied ancestry and speak mutually unintelligible languages, but they still recognize a sense of shared history. The most famous Kurd in history (in the West, anyway) is no doubt Saladin, who retook the Levant from the Europeans during the Second [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades Crusade]] and is considered a hero in the Muslim world, on par with Mehmed the Conqueror[[note]]The guy who conquered [[UsefulNotes/{{Istanbul}} Istanbul/Constantinople]][[/note]].

During the early modern era, the Kurds' homeland was contested between Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Persia. Thousands of Kurds were resettled to Khorasan during the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, since they staged many rebellions and their loyalty to Persia was questionable (as stated above, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims and had sympathy with the fellow Sunni Ottomans). To this day, there is a large Kurdish community in Northeast Iran (mainly in the province of North Khorasan). The ones who remained behind converted to Shiism in large numbers and include the Feyli, who are pro-Persian and in the present much less involved in the Kurdish civil rights movement than their brethren. On the other side of the border, the Ottoman Kurds were mostly left to sort their own affairs and established vassal states to govern themselves. The Ottomans only really began to get involved in the late 19th century, resulting in the birth of Kurdish nationalism.

The Kurds do not have a state now, but that does not mean they never tried. It began with UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, when the Ottoman Empire dissolved. The Kurds were very unhappy with the radical secularization (the Kurds being strongly Muslim), centralization of authority and rampant Turkish nationalism that was taking place in the country at the time, due to it threatening to marginalize them as well as the power of local chieftains and Kurdish autonomy. Around 700,000 Kurds had been forcibly deported by the Young Turks during the Armenian genocide, and almost half of them died. Some Kurdish groups sought the confirmation of Kurdish autonomy and self-determination in the Treaty of Sèvres, but the Turkish War of Independence prevented that. Kurdish revolutions were suppressed by the Turks and Iranians. British-backed Kurds did managed to declare independence and create the Republic of Ararat in Eastern Turkey on October 28th, 1927 or 1928, but it was quickly defeated and taken over by the Turks in September 1930. A Kingdom of Kurdistan existed in Iraq from September 1922 until July 1944, being defeated by the British and given back to Iraq with the provision for special rights for Kurds. A Soviet-sponsored Republic of Mahabad briefly existed in Iran in the 22nd of January, 1946, but quickly fell later that year.

Following several large scale Kurdish revolts in Kurdistan in the 1920s and 1930s, Turkish Kurdistan was put under martial law and many Kurds were displaced, with the Turkish government also encouraging resettlement of Albanians from UsefulNotes/{{Kosovo}} and Assyrians in the region to change the make-up of the population. Needless to say, the Kurds weren't very happy at Ankara for a long time after this, and the 1960 Turkish coup d'état halting their move towards integration in the Turkish government in the 1950's didn't help either. Eventually, the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê), also known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, was formed in the 1970s by Kurdish nationalists influenced by Marxist political thought, and has been involved in an armed struggle against the Turkish state since 1984 for cultural and political rights and self-determination for the Kurds, with open war between the PKK and Turkish military occurring from 1984 to 1999. During that period, the Turkish government banned the words "Kurds", "Kurdistan" and "Kurdish", prohibited the Kurdish language, and committed human rights abuses. Restrictions were gradually relaxed come the TurnOfTheMillennium, with the media being allowed to broadcast in Kurdish and the language being allowed to be taught as an elective. Nevertheless, the central government is still repressive and the insurgency has not yet stopped.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, during the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, a civil war between the Arabs and Kurds broke out due to the regime's implementation of anti-Kurdish policies, which resulted in the al-Anfal Campaign: the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq by the Iraqis. The most infamous attack during this campaign was the incident in Halabja in 1988, which killed 5,000 civilians instantly. The Iraqis recaptured most of the Kurdish areas of Iraq after the collapse of the Kurdish uprising in March 1991 and more than a million Kurds escaped to Turkey and Iran, with 20,000 dying in the process. Following UsefulNotes/TheGulfWar, the Kurds captured Erbil and Sulaymaniyah and established the Kurdistan Regional Government. After the fall of UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein, the situation improved more, with the central government recognizing the legality of the KRG and the presidency of Iraq (currently held by Sulaymaniyah-native Barham Salih) being given to the Kurds under a power-sharing agreement. Nowadays, the relationship between the Iraqi Kurds and Arabs are still frosty, but nowhere near as sub-zero as the time of Saddam. Iraqi Kurdistan is currently the only place in the world where the Kurds largely and legally govern themselves.

In Syria, Kurds make up the largest ethnic minority, and the Syrian government have employed techniques to suppress their ethnic identity like various bans on the use of the Kurdish language, refusal to register children with Kurdish names, the replacement of Kurdish place names with new names in Arabic, and the prohibition of businesses that do not have Arabic names. Around 300,000 Kurds were deprived of social rights, though the Syrian government gradually softened under pressure of the international community. Since the start of the [[UsefulNotes/TheArabSpring Syrian Civil War]] in 2012, the Kurds have effectively been governing themselves and are control of the majority of Syrian Kurdistan, including parts of Aleppo, Deir-ez-Zor, Hasakah, and Raqqa Governorates (the latter two including their titular cities). Ironically, the Kurds' and the Syrian government's relationship actually improved during the war; instead, the main enemy of the Kurds, following the defeat of the Islamic State in 2017, is Turkey, which considers the Syrian Kurdish YPG (''Yekîneyên Parastina Gel'', "People's Protection Units") militia as an offshoot of the PKK and is determined to stamp it out from its border. The Kurds' territory used to extend to Afrin in northwestern Aleppo until 2018, when Turkish-backed rebels ejected them out.

Needless to say, Kurds have had it rough. The Iranian government have at least treated them better than the Turkish, Iraqi or Syrian governments, however, due to their shared history and being cultural and ethnolinguistical relatives, with many Iranian Kurds and their leaders not wanting a separate Kurdish state, Kurds being well integrated into Iranian political life and the Kurdish language being used more today in Iran than any other time since the Iranian Revolution, though of course the Iranian government are opposed to any suggestion of Kurdish separatism, and have run into problems with Kurdish nationalists, most notably in the Iran crisis of 1946 and with the PJAK.

-->-- '''Kurdish proverb'''

Following several large scale Kurdish revolts in Kurdistan in the 1920s and 1930s, Turkish Kurdistan was put under martial law and many Kurds were displaced, with the Turkish government also encouraging resettlement of Albanians from UsefulNotes/{{Kosovo}} and Assyrians in the region to change the make-up of the population. Needless to say, the Kurds weren't very happy at Ankara for a long time after this, and the 1960 Turkish coup d'état halting their move towards integration in the Turkish government in the 1950's didn't help either. Eventually, the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê), also known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, was formed in the 1970s by Kurdish nationalists influenced by Marxist political thought, and has been involved in an armed struggle against the Turkish state since 1984 for cultural and political rights and self-determination for the Kurds, with open war between the PKK and Turkish military occurring from 1984 to 1999, the Turkish government banning the words "Kurds", "Kurdistan" and "Kurdish", prohibiting the Kurdish language, and committing human rights abuses. Restrictions were gradually relaxed come the TurnOfTheMillennium, with the media being allowed to broadcast in Kurdish and the language being allowed to be taught as an elective. Nevertheless, the central government is still repressive and the insurgency has not yet stopped.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, during the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, a civil war between the Arabs and Kurds broke out due to the regime's implementation of anti-Kurdish policies, which resulted in the al-Anfal Campaign: the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq by the Iraqis. The most infamous attack during this campaign was the incident in Halabja in 1988, which killed 5,000 civilians instantly. The Iraqis recaptured most of the Kurdish areas of Iraq after the collapse of the Kurdish uprising in March 1991 and more than a million Kurds escaped to Turkey and Iran, with 20,000 dying in the process. Following UsefulNotes/TheGulfWar, the Kurds captured Erbil and Sulaymaniyah and established the Kurdistan Regional Government. After the fall of UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein, the situation improved more, with the central government recognizing the legality of the KRG and the presidency of Iraq (currently held by Sulaymaniyah-native Barham Salih) being given to the Kurds under a power-sharing agreement. Nowadays, the relationship between the Iraqi Kurds and Arabs are still frosty, but nowhere near as sub-zero as the time of Saddam.

In Syria, Kurds make up the largest ethnic minority, and the Syrian government have employed techniques to suppress their ethnic identity like various bans on the use of the Kurdish language, refusal to register children with Kurdish names, the replacement of Kurdish place names with new names in Arabic, and the prohibition of businesses that do not have Arabic names, Kurdish private schools and books and other materials written in Kurdish. Around 300,000 Kurds were deprived of any social rights, though the Syrian government gradually softened under pressure of the international community. Eventually, because of the Syrian Civil War, the Kurds were effectively in control of Syrian Kurdistan from Andiwar to Jindires, and started the Rojava Revolution in 2013. Ironically, the Kurds' and the Syrian government's relationship actually improved during the war; instead, the main enemy of the Kurds, following the defeat of the Islamic State in 2017, is Turkey, which considers the Syrian Kurdish YPG (''Yekîneyên Parastina Gel'', "People's Protection Units") militia as an offshoot of the PKK and is determined to stamp it out from its border.

The majority of the Kurds are adherents of Islam. Iranian, Syrian, and Turkish Kurds are primarily Sunni Muslims, whereas Iranian Kurds are primarily Shia (although there is a significant Sunni community in the region bordering Turkey). Before Islam, the Kurds were theorized to adhere to the ancient faith of Yazdanism (also known as the "Cult of Angels"). Though Yazdanism is now extinct, syncretism of it with Islam and other faiths have produced two independent religions: the 12th century-era Yazidism and the 14th century-era Yarsanism (or ''Ahl-i Haqq''). Currently, Yazidis mostly live in Iraq, whereas Yarsanis live in Iran.

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in Western Asia divided between UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} (Northern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} (Southern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} (Western Kurdistan) and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by Kurds, as the name implies. The Kurdish languages are part of the Indo-European family and belong to the Iranian subgroup, including Persian, Pashto, and Baloch. They have been a part of many Iranian empires throughout centuries, but they have their own separate culture, languages, primarily adhere to Sunni Islam as opposed to Shia Islam, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Despite this, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in Western Asia after Arabs, Persians and Turks.

The name "Kurd" is a Persian word and originally referred to any nomadic tribes inhabiting the Zagros Mountains. The ethnogenesis of the Kurds started in the late 1st millennium CE, around the time of Islam's expansion into the Iranian Plateau. The Kurds are a heterogeneous nation with varied ancestry and speak mutually unintelligible languages, but they still recognize a sense of shared history. The most famous Kurd in history (in the West, anyway) is no doubt Saladin, who retook the Levant from the Europeans during the Second [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades Crusade]] and is considered a hero in the Muslim world, on par with Mehmed the Conqueror[[note]]The guy who conquered [[UsefulNotes/{{Istanbul}} Istanbul/Constantinople]][[/note]].

During the early modern era, the Kurds' homeland was contested between Ottoman Turkey and Safavid Persia. Thousands of Kurds were resettled to Khorasan during the reign of Shah Abbas the Great, since they staged many rebellions and their loyalty to Persia was questionable (as stated above, most Kurds are Sunni Muslims and had sympathy with the fellow Sunni Ottomans). To this day, there is a large Kurdish community in Northeast Iran (mainly in the province of North Khorasan). The ones who remained behind converted to Shiism in large numbers and became the Feyli, who are pro-Persian and in the present much less involved in the Kurdish civil rights movement than their brethren. On the other side of the border, the Ottoman Kurds were mostly left to sort their own affairs and established vassal states to govern themselves. The Ottomans only really began to get involved in the late 19th century, resulting in the birth of Kurdish nationalism.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, a war started between Kurds and Iraqis in the 1960s, and during the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, a civil war broke out due to the regime's implementation of anti-Kurdish policies, which resulted in the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq by the Iraqis, with the most infamous attack being the al-Anfal Campaign in Halabja in 1988, which killed 5,000 civilians instantly. The Iraqis recaptured most of the Kurdish areas of Iraq after the collapse of the Kurdish uprising in March 1991 and more than a million Kurds escaped to Turkey and Iran, with 20,000 dying in the process. Eventually, following UsefulNotes/TheGulfWar, the Kurds captured Erbil and Sulaymaniyah and established the Kurdistan Regional Government. After the fall of UsefulNotes/SaddamHussein, the situation improved more, with the central government recognizing the legality of the KRG and the presidency of Iraq (currently held by Sulaymaniyah-native Barham Salih) being given to the Kurds under a power-sharing agreement. Nowadays, the relationship between the Iraqi Kurds and Arabs are still frosty, but nowhere near as sub-zero as the time of Saddam.

In Syria, Kurds make up the largest ethnic minority, and the Syrian government have employed techniques to suppress their ethnic identity like various bans on the use of the Kurdish language, refusal to register children with Kurdish names, the replacement of Kurdish place names with new names in Arabic, and the prohibition of businesses that do not have Arabic names, Kurdish private schools and books and other materials written in Kurdish. Around 300,000 Kurds were deprived of any social rights, though the Syrian government gradually softened under pressure of the international community. Eventually, because of the Syrian Civil War, the Kurds were effectively in control of Syrian Kurdistan from Andiwar to Jindires, and started the Rojava Revolution in 2013. Ironically, the Kurds' and the Syrian government's relationship actually improved during the war; instead, the main enemy of the Kurds, following the defeat of the Islamic State in 2017, is Turkey, which considers the Syrian Kurdish YPG (''Yekîneyên Parastina Gel'') militia as an offshoot of the PKK and is determined to stamp it out from their borders.

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in Western Asia divided between UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} (Northern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} (Southern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} (Western Kurdistan) and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by Kurds, as the name implies. Kurds are most closely related to the Iranians, being an Iranian ethnic group like the Persians, Pashtuns and Tajiks and formerly part of the Persian Empire, but they have their own separate culture, languages, and primarily adhere to Sunni Islam as opposed to Shia Islam, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Yet, despite having their own unique culture and identity from the rest of the Middle East and playing a major role in the battles against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in Western Asia after Arabs, Persians and Turks.

So why don't they have their own country? Well, they've tried to create an independent state before, but none of their attempts succeeded. Let's begin with World War I, when the Ottoman Empire dissolved (which Kurdistan had been integrated into during the Ottoman-Persian Wars). Kurds were very unhappy with the radical secularization (the Kurds being strongly Muslim), centralization of authority and rampant Turkish nationalism that was taking place in the country at the time, due to it threatening to marginalize them as well as the power of local chieftains and Kurdish autonomy. Around 700,000 Kurds had been forcibly deported by the Young Turks during the Armenian genocide, and almost half of them died. Some Kurdish groups sought the confirmation of Kurdish autonomy and self-determination in the Treaty of Sèvres, but Kemal Atatürk prevented it in the aftermath of World War I. Kurdist revolutions were suppressed by the Turks and Iranians. British-backed Kurds did managed to declare independence and create the Republic of Ararat in Eastern Turkey on October 28th, 1927 or 1928, but it was quickly defeated and taken over by the Turks in September 1930. A Kingdom of Kurdistan existed in Iraq from September 1922 until July 1944, being defeated by the British and given back to Iraq with the provision for special rights for Kurds. A Soviet-sponsored Republic of Mahabad briefly existed in Iran in the 22nd of January, 1946, but quickly fell later that year.

Following several large scale Kurdish revolts in Kurdistan in the 1920s and 1930s, Turkish Kurdistan was put under martial law and many Kurds were displaced, with the Turkish government also encouraging resettlement of Albanians from Kosovo and Assyrians in the region to change the make-up of the population. Needless to say, the Kurds weren't very happy at Ankara for a long time after this, and the 1960 Turkish coup d'état halting their move towards integration in the Turkish government in the 1950's didn't help either. Eventually, the PKK (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê), also known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party, was formed in the 1970s by Kurdish nationalists influenced by Marxist political thought, and has been involved in an armed struggle against the Turkish state since 1984 for cultural and political rights and self-determination for the Kurds, with open war between the PKK and Turkish military occurring from 1984 to 1999, the Turkish government banning the words "Kurds", "Kurdistan" and "Kurdish" and prohibiting the Kurdish language, and the Turkey committing thousands of human rights abuses. Even today, Kurds in Turkey are still not allowed to get a primary education in their mother tongue and don't have a right to self-determination.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, a war started between Kurds and Iraqis in the 1960s, and during the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, a civil war broke out due to the regime's implementation of anti-Kurdish policies, which resulted in the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq by the Iraqis, with the most infamous attack by the Iraqis being in Halabja in 1988, which killed 5000 civilians instantly. The Iraqis recaptured most of the Kurdish areas of Iraq after the collapse of the Kurdish uprising in March 1991 and more than a million Kurds to the Turkish and Iranian borders, with 20,000 dying in the process. Eventually, following UN intervention, the Kurds managed to capture Erbil and Sulaimaniyah and establish the Kurdistan Regional Government. The area under control of Peshmerga was then expanded, and the Kurds now effectively control Kirkuk and parts of Mosul, with the authority of the KRG and legality of its laws and regulations being recognized in the articles 113 and 137 of the new Iraqi Constitution ratified in 2005, and the regions of Erbil and Sulaimaniya being unified.

In Syria, Kurds make up the largest ethnic minority, and the Syrian government have employed techniques to suppress their ethnic identity like various bans on the use of the Kurdish language, refusal to register children with Kurdish names, the replacement of Kurdish place names with new names in Arabic, and the prohibition of businesses that do not have Arabic names, Kurdish private schools and books and other materials written in Kurdish. Around 300,000 Kurds were deprived of any social rights, in violation of international law, though the Syrian government eventually promised to tackle the issue and grant Syrian citizenship to them to avoid further demonstrations and unrest. Eventually, because of the Syrian Civil War, the Kurds were able to take control of large parts of Syrian Kurdistan from Andiwar to Jindires, and started the Rojava Revolution in 2013, with the Democratic Union Party having plans to establish a new constitution for the ''de facto'' autonomous region.

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in Western Asia divided between UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} (Northern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} (Southern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} (Western Kurdistan) and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by Kurds, as the name implies. Kurds are most closely related to the Iranians, being an Iranian ethnic group like the Persians and Pashtuns and formerly part of the Persian Empire, but they have their own separate culture, languages, and primarily adhere to Sunni Islam as opposed to Shia Islam, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Yet, despite having their own unique culture and identity from the rest of the Middle East and playing a major role in the battles against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in Western Asia after Arabs, Persians and Turks.

->''”The Kurds have no friends but the mountains”''

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in Western Asia divided between UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} (Northern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} (Southern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} (Western Kurdistan) and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by Kurds, as the name implies. Kurds are most closely related to the Iranians, being an Iranian ethnic group like the Persians and Pashtuns and formerly part of the Persian Empire, but they have their own separate culture, languages, and primarily adhere to Sunni Islam as opposed to Shia Islam, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Yet, despite having their own unique culture and identity from the rest of the Middle East and playing a major role in the battles against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in Western Asia (aka. The Middle East) after Arabs, Persians and Turks.

[[caption-width-right:350:—>”The Kurds have no friends but the mountains”
—->--Kurdish proverb]]

[[caption-width-right:—>”The Kurds have no friends but the mountains”

—>”The Kurds have no friends but the mountains”
—>Kurdish proverb.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, a war started between the Kurds and Iraqis in the 1960s, and during the UsefulNotes/IranIraqWar, a civil war broke out due to the regime's implementation of anti-Kurdish policies, which resulted in the mass murder of hundreds of civilians, the wholesale destruction of thousands of villages and the deportation of thousands of Kurds to southern and central Iraq by the Iraqis, with the most infamous attack by the Iraqis being in Halabja in 1988, which killed 5000 civilians instantly. The Iraqis recaptured most of the Kurdish areas of Iraq after the collapse of the Kurdish uprising in March 1991 and more than a million Kurds to the Turkish and Iranian borders, with 20,000 dying in the process. Eventually, following UN intervention, the Kurds managed to capture Erbil and Sulaimaniyah and establish the Kurdistan Regional Government. The area under control of Peshmerga was then expanded, and the Kurds now effectively control Kirkuk and parts of Mosul, with the authority of the KRG and legality of its laws and regulations being recognized in the articles 113 and 137 of the new Iraqi Constitution ratified in 2005, and the regions of Erbil and Sulaimaniya being unified.

Needless to say, the Kurds have had it rough. The Iranians have at least treated them better than the Turks, Iraqis or Syrians, however, due to their shared history and being cultural and ethnolinguistical relatives, with many Iranian Kurds and their leaders not wanting a separate Kurdish state, Kurds being well integrated into Iranian political life and the Kurdish language being used more today in Iran than any other time since the Iranian Revolution, though of course the Iranian government are opposed to any suggestion of Kurdish separatism, and have run into problems with Kurdish nationalists, most notably in the Iran crisis of 1946 and with the PJAK.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/kurdistan_map.jpg]]

[[caption-width-right:350:Ever heard of a people without a country?]]

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in Western Asia divided between UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} (Northern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} (Southern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} (Western Kurdistan) and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by the Kurds, as the name implies. Out of the four countries they inhabit, Kurds are most closely related to the Iranians, being an Iranian ethnic group like the Persians and Pashtuns and formerly part of the Persian Empire, but they have their own separate culture, languages, and primarily adhere to Sunni Islam as opposed to Shia Islam, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Yet, despite having their own unique culture and identity from the rest of the Middle East and playing a major role in the battles against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East after the Arabs, Persians and Turks.

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in Western Asia divided between UsefulNotes/{{Turkey}} (Northern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Iraq}} (Southern Kurdistan), UsefulNotes/{{Syria}} (Western Kurdistan) and UsefulNotes/{{Iran}} (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by the Kurds, as the name implies. Out of the four countries they inhabit, Kurds are most closely related to the Iranians, being an Iranian ethnic group like the Persians and formerly part of the Persian Empire, but they have their own separate culture, languages, and primarily adhere to Sunni Islam as opposed to Shia Islam, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Yet, despite having their own unique culture and identity from the rest of the Middle East and playing a major role in the battles against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East after the Arabs, Persians and Turks.

So why don't they have their own country? Well, they've tried to create an independent state before, but none of their attempts succeeded. Let's begin with World War I, when the Ottoman Empire dissolved (which Kurdistan had been integrated into during the Ottoman-Persian Wars). The Kurds were very unhappy with the radical secularization (the Kurds being strongly Muslim), centralization of authority and rampant Turkish nationalism that was taking place in the country at the time, due to it threatening to marginalize them as well as the power of local chieftains and Kurdish autonomy. Around 700,000 Kurds had been forcibly deported by the Young Turks during the Armenian genocide, and almost half of them died. Some Kurdish groups sought the confirmation of Kurdish autonomy and self-determination in the Treaty of Sèvres, but Kemal Atatürk prevented it in the aftermath of World War I. Kurdist revolutions were suppressed by the Turks and Iranians. British-backed Kurds did managed to declare independence and create the Republic of Ararat in Eastern Turkey on October 28th, 1927 or 1928, but it was quickly defeated and taken over by the Turks in September 1930. A Kingdom of Kurdistan existed in Iraq from September 1922 until July 1944, being defeated by the British and given back to Iraq with the provision for special rights for Kurds. A Soviet-sponsored Republic of Mahabad briefly existed in Iran in the 22nd of January, 1946, but quickly fell later that year.

Kurdistan ('''Kurdish:''' ''کوردستان'') is a region in Western Asia divided between Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), Iraq (Southern Kurdistan), Syria (Western Kurdistan) and Iran (Eastern Kurdistan), inhabited by the Kurds, as the name implies. Out of the four countries they inhabit, Kurds are most closely related to the Iranians, being an Iranian ethnic group like the Persians and formerly part of the Persian Empire, but they have their own separate culture, languages, and primarily adhere to Sunni Islam as opposed to Shia Islam, and Turkey has the largest Kurdish population of the four countries at about 14.3 to 20 million. Yet, despite having their own unique culture and identity from the rest of the Middle East and playing a major role in the battles against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, they are a stateless nation, and at around 36.4 to 45.6 million people, they are the largest ethnic group in the world without their own country, and the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East after the Arabs, Persians and Turks.

[[caption-width-right:350:Ever Heard of a nation without a country?]]

Needless to say, the Kurds have had it rough. The Iranians have at least treated them better than the Turks, Iraqis or Syrians, however, due to their shared history and being cultural and ethnolinguistical relatives, with many Iranian Kurds and their leaders not wanting a separate Kurdish state, Kurds being well integrated into Iranian political life and the Kurdish language being used more today in Iran than any other time since the Iranian Revolution, though of course the Iranian government are opposed to any suggestion of Kurdish separatism, and have run into problems with Kurdish nationalists, most notably in the Iran crisis of 1946 and with the PJAK.