The Kurds are an Indo-European people from Kurdistan, located in Southwest Asia. They were traditionally nomadic, but after World War I, they were denied a separate state and banned from expressing their culture in Turkey. Iraq has also attacked them in the past, and there is dissent among different factions. Tribal organization is important to the Kurds, and their language has many dialects.
Kurds are people of Indo-European origin from Kurdistan. Kurdistan means “land of the Kurds” and is located in Southwest Asia in the mountainous region between Turkey, Iran and Iraq. The Kurds were traditionally a nomadic people, spending much of their time herding sheep and goats in the mountainous areas of Turkey and Iran. Life changed for Kurds after World War I, when the fall of the Ottoman Empire meant Kurds did not have a separate state of Kurdistan and were no longer free to roam the countries as they once were.
Although the British-funded Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 produced new nationalist states, a Kurdish state was rejected by Iraq, Turkey and Iran. Turkey has banned Kurds from expressing their traditional culture, even going so far as to ban them from wearing their traditional clothes in Turkish cities. The Turkish government considered the Kurds to be “mountain Turks” but wanted them to live in cities to even out the population distribution.
Iraq has also refused to view the Kurds as a separate minority and has in the past attacked the Kurds for their support for Iran in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war. Millions of Kurds have fled to live in Iran following the attacks. The Kurdish people, being mostly Sunni Muslims, were also victims of the crusades in which the sources of Christian power tried to conquer them.
There is much dissent between the different factions of the Kurds. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan had a war between them in Northern Iraq which lasted between 1994-1998. Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party and Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan agreed in 1998 to share power in northern Iraq.
A tribally oriented society is important to the Kurds. Kurds trust tribal organization as authority as they lack state government. Tribal support helps them access government as a group rather than on an individual basis. Iran has 150 different tribes. Kurdish tribes include the Sorchi, Herkki and Zibari. The Kurdish language has many dialects and is quite similar to the Persian language.
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