Kurds

Overview

The Kurds are an Iranian people with a historic homeland, Kurdistan, extending across parts of modern Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Approximately 30 million lived across the Middle East in 2019, making them one of the world’s largest peoples without a state. Their communities include residents of mountain districts and major cities such as Istanbul, Erbil, Kirkuk and Aleppo. Kurdish languages and national identity connect these populations, but their political circumstances differ sharply across the four states.

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I divided Kurdish lands among successor states and mandates. The Treaty of Sèvres offered a path toward Kurdish statehood; the Treaty of Lausanne, signed on July 24, 1923, replaced it and ended that prospect. Kurdish demands for self-determination endured. In Iraq, Kurds established substantial self-government after 1991 and later gained constitutional autonomy. In Turkey, a long conflict between the state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party has accompanied wider struggles for language and political rights. Kurds in Iran have sustained organized opposition to the Iranian regime, while Kurds in Syria gained territorial autonomy during the Syrian civil war and played a central role in fighting the Islamic State.

These movements do not form a single organization or follow one program. Iraqi Kurdish parties, Iranian opposition groups, Syrian Kurdish governing forces and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party operate in different political settings and have sometimes pursued competing interests. Differences among Kurdish factions affected the 2017 crisis over Kirkuk and frustrated efforts to share power among Syrian Kurdish parties. Kurdish identity likewise encompasses varied religious traditions and local histories; no armed movement speaks for the entire people.

Origins

Kurdistan lies across the highlands and adjoining plains of the northern Mesopotamia region and western Iran. Its mountains helped preserve distinct communities and later gave opposition movements routes for movement and ties to local populations. Kurds also live in mixed cities and districts alongside Arabs, Turkmens, Assyrians, Syriac Christians and Yazidis. Places associated with Kurdish life include the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Iranian Kurdistan, Turkish Kurdistan and Syrian Kurdistan. These names describe connected historical communities across state borders, not uniform political authorities.

Ottoman collapse transformed Kurdish political prospects. Sèvres contemplated Kurdish statehood, but Lausanne replaced its terms as the new Turkish Republic emerged. Kurdish-populated lands remained divided among Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. After 1925, oil from the Kurdish north of the Mandate of Mesopotamia was assigned to a unified Arab Iraq instead of Kurdistan. Borders and control of resources subsequently shaped disputes over autonomy, especially around Kirkuk. The loss of the statehood prospect at Lausanne remains central to Kurdish national memory.

Kurds in Turkey have sought official recognition of cultural and political rights since the republic’s founding in 1923. Kurdish-language bans and the removal of Kurdish geographical names formed part of the state’s historical suppression of Kurdish identity. Elsewhere, state policies varied, but Kurdish language, citizenship, landholding and political organization repeatedly became points of conflict. In Syria, an unannounced, single-day census in Hasakah Governorate in 1962 stripped approximately 150,000 Kurds of citizenship, creating a stateless population whose descendants also faced exclusion.

History

A Kurdish republic established at Mahabad in Iran in 1946 was short-lived, yet it retained an enduring place in Kurdish national identity. Iranian Kurdish parties became some of Iran’s oldest organized opposition forces, seeking greater political rights across generations. Their history followed its own course, distinct from the later insurgency in Turkey or the institutions established in northern Iraq. Iranian Kurdistan’s terrain also allowed opposition movements to operate near communities whose support remained important to them.

In Iraq, the conflict between Kurdish movements and Baghdad intensified during the twentieth century. Iraqi governments used Kirkuk as a starting point for incursions into the Kurdish highlands. During Mustafa Barzani’s rebellion from 1968 to 1975, Israeli security and intelligence agents trained Kurdish forces and provided humanitarian assistance. This quiet cooperation served Kurdish autonomy and Israel’s security interests. Iraq’s government also pursued demographic control of the oil-rich Kirkuk area, forcibly removing Kurds, Turkmens and Christians and replacing them with Arabs from central and southern Iraq.

The scale of that transformation matters to Kirkuk’s history. The 1957 city census recorded Turkmens as 40 percent of its population, Kurds as 35 percent, Arabs as 24 percent and Christians as 1 percent. In the surrounding at-Tamim province, Kurds were 55 percent, Arabs 29 percent and Turkmens 14 percent. Saddam Hussein’s government later expelled non-Arab residents, settled Arabs in their place and compelled Kurds and Turkmens to register as Arabs through a process called “national correction.” Later population totals therefore reflect forced removals, resettlement and coerced registration as well as ordinary demographic change; displaced residents’ property rights remain integral to Kirkuk’s political future.

After the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein suppressed a Kurdish uprising. Coalition forces expelled Iraqi central authorities from the north, and in October 1991 Saddam withdrew his administration from extensive Kurdish-held territory beyond the original safe haven centered on Zakho. Kurdish authorities filled the vacuum and expanded control despite uncertainty about how far American protection extended. Saddam’s food and fuel blockade failed to force their submission. In 1992, the United States, Britain and France established a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect Kurds after the regime’s genocidal campaign. Its protection had limits: in August 1996, Iraqi helicopters moved north of the thirty-sixth parallel while Washington declined to respond under an interpretation applying the restriction to fixed-wing aircraft.

Self-government developed into the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), with Erbil as a political center. The 2003 invasion of Iraq destroyed the Ba’athist regime responsible for the Anfal campaign and enabled Kurdish political and economic power to grow. The Kurdistan Region subsequently gained substantial autonomy within Iraq. Its authorities also governed diverse populations; in 2014, the KRG identified protection of Muslims, Christians, Kurds, Assyrians, Turkmens and Arabs among its central responsibilities. Before the Islamic State seized the Nineveh Plains, Kurdish forces exercised effective control over Christian areas there through intelligence personnel, Kurdish-paid Christian forces and a largely Kurdish Iraqi army garrison.

In 2017, the Kurdistan Region independence referendum expressed a powerful demand for statehood but led to a confrontation with Baghdad and the loss of Kurdish control over Kirkuk and other disputed areas. A Kurdish faction coordinated with Baghdad during the Kirkuk crisis, exposing consequential divisions within the independence movement. The referendum did not create an independent state; the Kurdistan Region retained autonomy while its territorial and political position weakened. Israel, which had maintained quiet relations with Iraqi Kurdish leaders for decades, openly backed the referendum.

Persecution and survival

Saddam Hussein’s regime subjected Iraqi Kurds to genocide. The Anfal campaign was a campaign of ethnic cleansing that destroyed much of rural Kurdistan and included chemical attacks. In 1988, Iraqi forces used chemical weapons against the Kurdish city of Halabja in the Halabja massacre. The attack became an enduring symbol of the regime’s violence against Kurds. Arabization compounded that violence in government-controlled northern Iraq: after the 1991 Gulf War alone, Saddam’s government expelled 120,000 Turkmens, Kurds and Christians, mostly from Kirkuk and nearby villages. Counting expulsions before and after 1991, more than 800,000 of northern Iraq’s approximately 3.5 million residents were internally displaced.

Iraq’s regime also deported tens of thousands of Shia Arabs and Kurds to Iran in the late 1970s and early 1980s; scholars and merchants supporting Najaf’s religious schools were prominent targets. Displacement and coerced identity changes fractured communities whose members later sought to recover homes and political standing. The fall of Saddam’s regime ended his government’s campaign, but did not erase its demographic consequences. In 2018, Iran-aligned Popular Mobilization Forces groups were reported to have arbitrarily or unlawfully detained Kurds and Turkmens in Kirkuk.

In Syria, statelessness imposed by the 1962 Hasakah census persisted for decades. Kurds denied citizenship and their descendants lacked identity cards and access to government health care and education. They could not inherit or bequeath assets, while missing documents restricted travel. A 2011 citizenship decree did not resolve every case: approximately 40,000 Kurds covered by it still had been unable to obtain citizenship by the 2019 reporting period. Under Bashar al-Assad’s regime, Kurdish language and culture also faced suppression. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad blocked land distribution in Hasakah Governorate to prevent the emergence of a small Kurdish landowning class.

Repression in Iran has followed a different political pattern. The Iranian regime has treated Kurdish demands for rights as a security threat, using arbitrary detention, executions and attacks on opposition groups. In 2015, protests erupted in Mahabad after the rape and murder of a Kurdish woman; regime police killed six protesters. The Hengaw Organization for Human Rights found that Kurds accounted for 28 percent of people subjected to the death penalty by the regime in 2018. During the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests, Iranian Kurdish opposition groups mobilized shopkeepers for general strikes, demonstrating continued local support. The regime attacked opposition parties with assassinations, drones and missiles. Its national-security prosecutions also punished Kurdish journalism: the Kordpour brothers received prison sentences from Mahabad’s Revolutionary Court in a case chiefly concerning their reporting and interviews about human rights.

Religion and culture

Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims, while Kurdish communities also include Shia Muslims and followers of other religious traditions. Religious affiliation does not determine a single Kurdish political position. In Iraq, many Yazidis identify as ethnically Kurdish, while others regard Yazidis as distinct from Muslim Kurds in both religion and ethnicity. Iraq’s former government classified Yazidis as Arabs without historical basis for imposing that identity. Their varied self-identification illustrates the importance of describing Kurdish and Yazidi communities on their own terms.

Kurdish languages remain a central form of cultural expression across the four states, though state borders and restrictions have shaped how they are taught and used publicly. Turkey historically banned Kurdish and removed Kurdish place names; under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, authorities also suppressed Kurdish cultural activities and targeted Kurdish-language education. Syrian Kurds faced restrictions on language and culture under the Assad regime. Cultural rights thus form part of Kurdish demands alongside citizenship, representation and control over local affairs.

Kurdish communities also include urban populations whose experiences differ from those of mountain districts. Before the Syrian civil war, Aleppo had about 2.5 million residents, with a large Sunni Arab majority and a substantial Kurdish population. During the war, the interests of its established western districts, poorer eastern neighborhoods and Kurdish districts did not divide neatly along religious lines. Class, urban–rural differences and Kurdish territorial concerns shaped alliances and fighting. In Iraq, Mosul and Kirkuk likewise brought Kurdish communities into contact with other peoples and competing claims over security and local government.

Present day

In Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s armed conflict with the state has coexisted with a broader Kurdish struggle for political and cultural rights. Turkey opened a public peace process in 2009, including negotiations involving the imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. In November 2012, Öcalan ordered hundreds of Kurdish prisoners to end a hunger strike lasting more than two months. On March 21, 2013, he declared a unilateral ceasefire and called on PKK fighters to withdraw from Turkey to Iraq. The process ended after Turkey’s June 2015 parliamentary election, and conflict returned to full-scale war in 2016. Authorities also imprisoned about 12 members of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party from 2016 onward, including former co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş. Suppression of civic activity and Kurdish-language education has narrowed political participation while leaving self-government in Turkish Kurdistan far from reach.

Iranian Kurdish organizations pursue their own programs. PJAK, an Iranian Kurdish affiliate of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, was founded in 1997 and began intermittent armed operations against the Iranian regime in 2004. The Kurdistan Freedom Party was founded in 1991 as the Revolutionary Union of Kurdistan and adopted its current name in 2007; its fighters attacked regime security forces during an army parade near Sanandaj on April 19, 2016. These groups belong to Iran’s political history and should not be treated as interchangeable with Iraqi Kurdish institutions or all Kurdish communities. Iranian Kurdish opposition parties remained active during the 2022 protests despite regime attacks.

During the Syrian civil war, Syrian Kurds gained de facto autonomy as Assad regime authority receded from their areas in 2012 and 2013. By 2014, Kurdish forces were confronting the Islamic State near Kobani and elsewhere. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) brought together Kurds, Arabs, Syriac Christians, Turkmen and Yazidis in the campaign against the terrorist organization. About 2,000 American advisers helped build Kurdish forces’ military capabilities during the 2018 campaign. In 2024, the SDF controlled a broad area east of the Euphrates, supported by several hundred American troops in operations against Islamic State remnants. Its composition had widened: by 2025, Arabs accounted for around 65,000 of an estimated 100,000 fighters, while the predominantly Kurdish YPG and YPJ remained its most influential units.

The Islamic State’s advance devastated communities in northern Syria. Its takeover drove most Kurds and Christians from Raqqa, where they had previously made up approximately 20 percent and 1 percent of the population respectively. On May 1, 2015, the organization published images of fighters firing near Tall Tamr and capturing a Kurdish fighter. Even after its territorial losses, it continued attacks on Kurdish and American forces: a suicide bombing against a joint patrol in Manbij on January 16, 2019, killed 19 people, including four Americans and five Kurds. Kurdish-led operations remained central to preventing a resurgence.

Syrian Kurdish autonomy also produced disputes over territory, representation and political freedom. At one stage, about two million people lived under Democratic Union Party control, roughly 60 percent of them Kurds. Its maps proposed an enlarged Afrin canton including Azaz, Jarabulus and parts of al-Bab and Manbij, where Kurds would have formed about 30 percent of the population. The party imposed conscription, pursued Kurdish activists and used arrests, kidnappings, deportations and closures of rival party offices against political opponents. Syrian opposition leaders formally recognized Kurdish national rights but did not put that recognition into effect. A later High Negotiations Committee charter issued in London recognized Kurdish citizenship rights without the earlier charter’s broader national-rights commitment. Successive Kurdish unity agreements also failed over power sharing.

Turkey opposed Kurdish territorial expansion along its border. In February 2016, Democratic Union Party forces captured territory adjoining the Afrin pocket under cover of Russian airstrikes. Turkey then launched Operation Euphrates Shield both to drive the Islamic State from its border and to stop Kurdish forces gaining more territory west of the Euphrates. By March 2017, the operation had created a Turkish-influenced zone separating Kurdish-held areas east and west of the river. A committee involving Russian forces, Kurdish forces and local Arab tribes began work on governance east of the Euphrates in December 2017.

Turkey’s 2018 invasion of Afrin, Operation Olive Branch, targeted Kurdish control and autonomy. Kurdish fighters left the Euphrates Valley for Afrin, slowing operations against the Islamic State. Turkish-backed factions looted and confiscated Kurdish residents’ homes and committed abuses in and around Afrin, including torture, rape and property seizures, particularly in Kurdish and Yazidi areas. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sought a border buffer area that would suppress the YPG and replace Kurdish residents with Sunni Arabs. Turkish forces attacked Kurdish forces again in northeastern Syria in 2019 after American support was withdrawn from the border area.

Syrian Kurds continued to face threats as Syria’s balance of power changed. On October 6, 2025, local Kurdish fighters and government-aligned security forces clashed in Aleppo’s Kurdish-majority Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafiyeh neighborhoods. In January 2026, Syrian army units surrounded those neighborhoods after clashes with Kurdish-led forces. These developments placed Kurdish communities once again between their own security structures and governments seeking control of contested districts.

Kurdish relations with Israel have remained part of the region’s diplomacy. Israel’s assistance to Barzani’s forces from 1968 to 1975 preceded its public support for Iraqi Kurdish independence in 2017. In February 2024, Kurdish diaspora organizations from Germany, Denmark and Austria sent a delegation to Israel to express solidarity with Jews. Later that year, Israel’s foreign minister called for stronger political and security ties with Kurdish communities facing pressure from the Iranian regime and Turkey. Such ties reflect decisions made by Kurdish actors pursuing their own national interests; Kurdish self-determination is compatible with support for the existing State of Israel.