The Kurdish People

Seminomadic tribes inhabiting the region of Kurdistan in southwestern Asia. Most Kurds are Sunnites, orthodox Muslims, many of whom live in small villages. Their chief manufacture is finely woven rugs. Many Kurds engage in sheep raising and agriculture. The Kurds adopted agriculture only recently as they were assimilated into the broader societies in the areas where they live. They speak Kurdish, a language of the western Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. In the early 1990s, the Kurd population was estimated at 26 million. Of these, more than half lived in Turkey; the rest live in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and in several of the former republics of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan. Accurate population figures, however, are difficult to attain.

The Kurds resisted invasions by many warring peoples, but were subjugated by the Seljuks in the 11th century and brought into the Ottoman Empire in the 14th century. In the 19th century, many Kurds agitated for an independent nation. The Treaty of Sèvres, concluded by the Allies with Turkey in 1920, promised the Kurds an independent state; this promise was not kept. Instead, Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, while working to forge a strong Turkish national identity, suppressed Kurdish culture and identity, leading to a wave of uprisings. Since 1925 Kurdish revolts have occurred in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran.

In 1970, after more than eight years of almost continuous war, the Iraqi government promised the Kurds autonomy over a region in northeastern Iraq. The implementation of this pledge in 1974 fell far short of Kurdish demands, however, and the civil war resumed. The rebellion collapsed in 1975 after Iran withdrew its support, as part of a border agreement with Iraq. In 1988 thousands of Kurds were killed (some by chemical weapons) and hundreds of Kurdish villages were destroyed by Iraqi troops, after Kurdish guerrillas sided with Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. In March and April 1991, immediately after the Persian Gulf War, another uprising consisting primarily of Kurds challenged Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime.

The Kurdish rebels, poorly armed and lacking experience, were easily crushed by the Iraqi government. More than 1 million Kurds fled to Turkey, Iran, and the mountainous areas of northern Iraq. Many civilians are believed to have been killed either in the rebellion or in their efforts to flee Iraq. The Kurds demanded Hussein fulfill the promise of an autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq, but negotiations with the Iraqi government stalled. Despite the existence of a Kurdish region in northern Iraq protected by the United Nations (UN), the neighboring countries of Iran, Syria, and Turkey support Iraq's claim to the territory against Kurdish desires for an autonomous state. Conflict between Kurdish groups, notably the Kurdish Workers party, and the government in Turkey, where the Kurdish parties are considered secessionist, also continued in the 1990s. In March 1995 Turkey sent 35,000 troops into northern Iraq to quell and push back Kurdish rebels in the southeastern border region of Turkey. The battle between Turkey and the Kurdish guerrillas began in 1984 and had resulted in 15,000 deaths by 1995. About 600,000 Kurds remained in refugee camps in northern Iraq under UN protection in 1992.