who is Kurdish ? why they do not have country?

Answer 1

The Kurds are an ethnic group who consider themselves to be from a region (rather than a country) called Kurdistan.

Kurdistan covers areas next to each other in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey.

The above countries are where most of the worlds Kurds are, however they are all over the world.

I guess they are more like a group of people, than a nation of people. Although, like i said, they do consider Kurdistan as their home land.

Hope that helps! x

Answer 2

The Kurds: Largest ethnic group which does not have it's own country. Previously a nomadic people who roamed over what is now Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey. The majority now live in Turkey. They were in this area long before the Turks invaded what is now Turkey.
Neither the Kurds or the Turks were Muslims at that time. Under the Ottoman Empire they were still able to take their flocks into the mountains without worrying about country borders.
After the Treaty of Sèvres there was briefly a Kurdistan, but this was annulled at the Treaty of Lausanne in 1924.
When Mustafa Kemal, aka Kemal Attaturk formed the Republic of Turkey, he made a point of stressing the indivisibility of Turkey. As a result of this the persecution of the Turkish Kurds began. They were considered to be 'mountain Turks', their language was forbidden until the mid 1990s, and even now Kurdish Turks are reluctant to speak their mother tongue in public. It was even said that Kurdish was a primitive Turkish dialect, which is completely false. Turkish originates in East Turkmenistan and is still spoken there. Kurdish is an Indo-Persian language related to Farsi (Persian). Kurds from predominately Arab countries write Kurdish in Arabic script. Turkish Kurds use the Latin alphabet, with the addition of 'w' and 'x' which are not present in the Turkish alphabet.
The vast majortiy of Kurds are Muslim, but some are Yezidi - mainly in north-west Iran, but also in Turkey. About 3 million Turkish Kurds are Alevis, a religion which has it's origins in the Shi'ite Muslim section. However, many do not consider themselves to be Muslims and there are hints of previous Christian connections. They even have a 'Father Christmas? figure, who gives gifts to the children on December 25th.
All Kurds celebrate Nevroz, the Kurdish New Year, on 21st March. They light fires and this is an indication of their association with Zoroastrians.
Since the drawing-up of borders at the treaty of Lausanne, bordering countries have played off one group of Kurds against the other. Syria welcomed the Kurdish Turks under Abdullah Öcalan, whilst removing citizenship from their own Kurdish population.
I bet that's more than you bargained for!
My first contact with Kurds was in 1962, and that was in England. They were Iraqi Kurds. I have 4 Turkish Kurdish step-children, all living in Europe.

Answer 3

An introduction into Kurdish history and culture can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurds

As to why Kurds do not have a country, the answer is simple: the Turkish government chose not to let it happen. Under the Treaty of Sevre (1920), the imperial Turkish government agreed to allow a trilateral Anglo-Franco-Italian commission to develop "a scheme of local autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish areas lying east of the Euphrates, south of the southern boundary of Armenia as it may be hereafter determined, and north of the frontier of Turkey with Syria and Mesopotamia". However, around the same time, there was a change in the Turkish government. General Mustafa Kemal assembled a new army and proceeded to defeat Armenia in the east and Greece in the west. The new Turkey (with Mustafa Kemal as its president) was able to renegotiate the Treaty of Sevre and re-establish itself as a single nation. The Treaty of Kars (1921) and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) reaffirmed the Turkish sovereignty almost all of its pre-war territory, except Mosul and Kirkuk (both of which eventually ended up belonging to Iraq).

Answer 4

Dark Girl has pretty much given you the answer. They are in the same sort of position the Poles were in during the early decades of the 20th century. Everyone knew there was such a thing as a Pole and that there had been a country called Poland in earlier times. However, after World War 1 the victors tried to resurrect 'Poland' taking the western half from Prussia and eastern half from Russia. This led directly to the flash point which started the Second World War. Turkey will go bananas if the Kurds set up their own state in Northern Iraq because the next thing they will claim is South-Eastern Turkey. Watch that space for REAL trouble!!

Answer 5

Kurds have an language a distinct and rich culture, but unfortunately they have lacked a nation state, but that is not unusual as the Baluch are in the same 'boat'. A tribal/etchnic spread across several national borders.

It is probably because when straight lines were drawn all over maps of the Middle East by the victors at Versailles, the Kurds had no sponsor. They may have not have stood up to Ottoman Turk occupation as well as others and therefore had no voice. The Jews very nearly did not get the Israel project off the ground. Twists of history is the short answer I suppose.

Answer 6

for further information, it's well worth checking out a song by David Rovics, entitled "Good Kurds, Bad Kurds".

It explains how we in the West fervently supported Kurds fighting against Saddam in Iraq (with money, military training, arms etc) - yet, the very same people, across an arbitrarily drawn political boundary are treated as terrorists - even though Turkish troops burned down some 3,000 Kurdish villages.

Turkey, you see, is our strategic ally in the area. So we can ignore their human rights abuses. Yet it was also advantageous to support resistance fighters against Saddam - hence the resurgence of the Iraqi Kurds at the moment. They're the only faction in Iraq who are genuinely supportive of the US (thanks to the history of "military aid" arms deals), and so are treated well by the coalition forces.

Turkey, meanwhile, sees the resurgence among Iraqi Kurds as a direct threat, and has authorised military raids across the border, into Iraq, and attack Kurdish communities, using the American policy of "pre-emptive defence".

Now the Americans are in the middle of a real mess. But, going on past experience, they'll probably just sit back and allow the Western arms companies to sell masses of weapons to both sides...

"Geopolitics is confusing - in fact it can be quite absurd -
Especially if you value your freedom,
You live in Turkey, and you are a Kurd..."

Answer 7

The Kurds, whom you know already where they live, have been fighting for their land against all invaders since very ancient times. They are mentioned in Xenophon's "Anabasis". They fought against Alexander the Great and so on until today. They want now to be free of domination from Iran, Iraq and Turkey. Although these countries have little in common save Islamism, they agree in one thing: To deny the independence of Kurdistan. Thus, the Kurds have no country of their own. I don't like the Polish analogy as the history and situations are very different. The Kurds are ethnical akin to the Iranians although separated from them since before the Persian Empire. They are Moslems. The Kurdish language belongs to the Indo-European family. So they have nothing in common with the Iraqi Arabs, the Turks and little with the Iranians.

Answer 8

Same can be said of the Palestinians

Answer 9

What is wrong with Kurdistan?