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Who Are the Kurds?

VOA News

   The Kurds' involvement in the conflict in Syria is complicated, because
   of the group's troubled history that spreads across several regional
   borders. Here is a look at the current Kurdish crisis and how it came
   to be.

   Who are the Kurds?

   The Kurds are one of the indigenous people of the Mesopotamian plains
   and the highlands, areas that today are contained within southeastern
   Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and
   southwestern Armenia.

   Estimated at between 25 million and 35 million people, the Kurds are
   the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East. They form a
   distinctive community, united through race, culture and language, and
   while most of them are Sunni Muslims, they also adhere to a number of
   different religions and creeds, including Christians, Jews, Yazidis and
   Zoroastrians.

   They are considered the largest ethnic group in the world to be
   stateless.

   Why don't they have a country?

   After World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious
   Western allies made provision in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres for the
   formation of a Kurdish state, to be known as Kurdistan.

   But their hopes were dashed three years later when the Treaty of
   Lausanne, which set the boundaries of modern Turkey, made no provision
   for a Kurdish state and left Kurds with minority status in four
   countries -- Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Over the next 80 years, any
   move by Kurds to set up an independent state was quashed.

   After the firstGulf War, followed by a Kurdish uprising in northern
   Iraq and the establishment of a no-fly zone, the Kurds managed to
   establish a semiautonomous region. The second Gulf War, which ousted
   Saddam Hussein, enabled them to consolidate those gains in a largely
   autonomous region across northern Iraq.

   In recent years, the fight against the Islamic State terror group has
   presented an opportunity for the Kurds to further project legitimacy on
   the international stage.

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