The word "Kurdistan" is first attested in 11th century Seljuk chronicles. Meanwhile, the Russian-backed Assad regime had made inroads into territory previously held by the Islamic State and rebels. However, following the chaos in Iraq after the US invasion, Turkey has increasingly worked with the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. [47] The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, who took more than 80 Turkish persons captive in Mosul during their offensive, is an enemy of Turkey, making Kurdistan useful for Turkey as a buffer state. What the map fails to show is the percentage of those of Kurdish nationality compared to others in the “area”, the scope of which also isn’t identified.

in Syria, with a total area of approximately 392,000 km² (151,000 sq. mi.) Furthermore, it was accepted too “the voluntary adhesion to such an independent Kurdish State of the Kurdish inhabiting that part of Kurdistan which has hitherto been included in the Mosul vilayet”. Your email address will not be published. In this context, the Turkish State, which was naturally not very pleased to find some Kurdish autonomous structures at its southern borders, in Syria and Iraq, has chosen to deal with the external “Kurdish question” in a very hawkish way. The operation succeeded in Syria, but the Erdogan Administration had to identify soon a new ‘danger’ in Northern Iraq, where the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government, controlled by Kurdish pro-independence parties, sets the date for an independence referendum on September 25, 2017. If these demands had some rational arguments, the surprise was the Kurdish claim to the non-Kurdish Iranian region which had to offer an access to the Persian Gulf. The main cities in this area are Kirkuk and Arbil.

This map is an estimation of areas that have been historically populated by a Kurdish majority according to a number of historical maps and data. Click each marker to explore the region, view pictures, and learn more. The Kurds who inhabit this land have suffered from persecution for centuries. ", A Dictionary of Scripture Geography, p 57, by John Miles, 486 pages, Published 1846, Original from Harvard University, Village on the Euphrates: From Foraging to Farming at Abu Hureyra, by A.M.T Moore, G.C.

Amid the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from three northern provinces, Iraqi Kurdistan emerged in 1992 as an autonomous entity inside Iraq with its own local government and parliament. N. Maxoudian, "Early Armenia as an Empire: The Career of Tigranes III, 95–55 BC". Often described as one of the largest national communities in the world without their own state, the Kurds, numbering somewhere between 25 and 30 million, are a very distinct community, with its own language, history and traditions. [89] This act caused Baghdad to threaten to revoke Exxon's contract in its southern fields, most notably the West-Qurna Phase 1 project. [55] Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life. [80][79] The steppe and desert in the south, by contrast, have such species as palm trees and date palm. Anyway, the Kurdish State as claimed at the San Francisco Conference was never established. A last attempt to put a Kurdish state on the map is made in 1946. [29], In the tenth and eleventh centuries, several Kurdish principalities emerged in the region: in the north the Shaddadids (951–1174) (in east Transcaucasia between the Kur and Araxes rivers) and the Rawadids (955–1221) (centered on Tabriz and which controlled all of Azerbaijan), in the east the Hasanwayhids (959–1015) (in Zagros between Shahrizor and Khuzistan) and the Annazids (990–1116) (centered in Hulwan) and in the west the Marwanids (990–1096) to the south of Diyarbakır and north of Jazira.[30][31]. It is impossibly inappropriate to ignore more than 90% of the will of the Turkish population to accommodate Kurdish minority’s internationally chaperoned ambitions to be a state in Northern Iraq, which is not even supported by its own population in Turkey. The pashalics of Kirkook and Solimania also comprise part of Upper Curdistan.

[28] Other geographical references to the Kurds in Syriac sources appear in Zuqnin chronicle, writings of Michael the Syrian and Bar hebraeus. Explore Syrian Civil War news on live map in English. I think you need to learn about basic statistics and democratic representation and rights!! More than one week after President Trump decided to pull the United States out of northern Syria, the situation on the ground has begun reflecting a new phase in the Syrian conflict. His regime held only 16 percent of Syria’s inhabited areas at that stage. You can see these two areas along with the Islamic State in the interactive map below: [44][45], At the end of the First Gulf War, the Allies established a safe haven in northern Iraq. Kurds fighting in the Syrian Civil War were able to take control of large sections of northern Syria as government forces, loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, withdrew to fight elsewhere. In the 16th century, after prolonged wars, Kurdish-inhabited areas were split between the Safavid and Ottoman empires. [56] Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. In spite of the Franco-British omission, the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-1920 has offered a chance to the Kurdish nationalists: between a larger and  independent Wilsonian Armenia and the French and British mandates of Syria (and Lebanon) and Mesopotamia, there was a place to fill in for a small Kurdish entity.