Kurdistan

Upland region in southwestern Asia, homeland of the Kurds. It covers large areas of northwestern Iran and extends into northeastern Iraq, Armenia, eastern Turkey, and northeastern Syria. Major cities include Al Mawsil and Karkuk, in Iraq; Sanandaj and Saqqiz, in Iran; and Erzurum, in Turkey. Landforms include the northwestern Zagros Mountains and their oil-rich foothills; the eastern Anatolian Plateau; Lake Van, in Turkey; Lake Urmia, in Iran; and Mount Aragats, in Armenia.

Most of Kurdistan was conquered by the Arabs in the 7th century and later became part of the Ottoman Empire. Following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the creation of an independent Kurdistan was promised by the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), but was dropped later from the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). Since then, the unsettled issue of Kurdish autonomy, at times expressed in violent and brutally quelled Kurdish rebellions, has kept the nations with large Kurdish minorities politically unstable. In 1961, Iran established the semiautonomous Kurdistan Province, and during 1974-1975 it supported a Kurdish movement for autonomy in Iraq.

The latter effort did not succeed in creating an acceptable settlement, however, and fighting between Kurds and Iraqis has continued to flare since that time, most notably in the period following the Persian Gulf War in 1991, during which more than 1 million Iraqi Kurds were displaced from their homes. In 1992 Iraqi Kurds held their first elections to choose a leader and a national assembly; this government was largely ineffective, however, due to violent clashes between rival Kurdish groups.

Turkey has been the scene of fighting between Kurdish guerrillas and government forces since 1984. Relations between the two sides worsened in the early 1990s, as fighting intensified in Kurdish areas in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq. By 1995 more than 10,000 Kurdish rebels, Turkish troops, and civilians had been killed or left homeless. In March of that year the Turkish government moved 35,000 troops across the border into northern Iraq in an effort to prevent cross-border raids by Kurds belonging to the separatist Kurdish Workers' party. Turkish officials claimed that they would only withdraw from the region, which is monitored by the coalition forces who defeated Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, if a border zone was created to provide security. Turkey withdrew its troops six weeks later under widespread international criticism.