Kurdistan
Fast facts
- Conservation status
- Stateless nation
Facts from Wikipedia’s “Kurdistan” page (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Kurdistan (; ), or Greater Kurdistan, is the region in the Middle East where the Kurds inhabit and the Kurdish culture, languages, and national identity have historically been based.
- M. T. O’Shea, Trapped between the map and reality: geography and perceptions of Kurdistan, 258 pp., Routledge, 2004. (see p. 77)
Geographically, Kurdistan is located between the northwestern Zagros and the eastern Taurus mountain ranges. Kurdistan is home to many religions with the main ones being Islam, Yazidism, Christianity, Alevism, and Yarsanism.
Geography
Kurdistan is made up of four regions: southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan), northwestern Iran (Eastern Kurdistan), and northeastern Syria (Western Kurdistan).
Some definitions also include parts of southern Transcaucasia. Some Kurdish nationalist organizations seek to create an independent nation state having some or all of these areas, while others want more autonomy within the existing national borders.
Naming
Historically, the word “Kurdistan” is first written in 11th-century Seljuk records Many Kurdish dynasties, emirates, principalities, and chiefdoms were established from the 8th to 19th centuries.
The 20th century saw the establishment of the short-lived areas of the Kurdish state (1918–1919), Kingdom of Kurdistan (1921–1924), Kurdistansky Uyezd i.e. “Red Kurdistan” (1923–1929), Republic of Ararat (1927–1930), and Republic of Mahabad (1946). The Corduene was also used to refer to the region.
Self-rule
Iraqi Kurdistan first gained autonomous status in a 1970 agreement with the Iraqi government, and its status was re-confirmed as the autonomous Kurdistan Region in Iraq in 2005. There is also a Kurdistan Province in Iran, but it has no autonomous control.
Kurds fighting in the Syrian Civil War were able to take control of large parts of northern Syria and establish self-governing regions in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, namely the Rojava, where they want autonomy in a hypothetical post-war federal Syria.
Where this page comes from
The article above is adapted from “Kurdistan” on Simple English Wikipedia, by its contributors. We removed reference markers, navigation boxes and tables, expanded measurement templates into readable numbers, and kept the prose otherwise intact.
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