Kurds

Kurds

The Kurds are known in the West as the victims of both Saddam Hussein's oppression and the ethnic cleansing practices of the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF), which warred against the Partyia Kakaran Kurdistan (Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK). The Kurds have long lived in contiguous regions that they refer to as Kurdistan, that is, "The Land of the Kurds," now largely within the confines of four Middle Eastern countries: Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. A half million Kurds also live in former countries of the Soviet Union, especially in Armenia and Azerbaijan.

The Kurds in Turkey number approximately 15 million and make up 21 percent of the population. Half of the Kurdish population lives in fourteen predominantly Kurdish provinces of the southeast; the other half lives in the large cities of Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir and in the western provinces. From 1980 to 2000, some 3 million Kurds fled from the southeast and east to the western provinces in the wake of Turkish persecution. Iran has the second-largest Kurdish population; Kurds number around six and a half million, or 10 percent of the population, and live predominantly in the provinces of West Azerbaijan, Ardalan, and Bakhtaran (formerly Kermanshah). Hundreds of thousands of Kurds also live elsewhere in Iran, especially in the cities of Tabriz, Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz.

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