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The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey.According to various estimates, they compose between 15% and 20% of the population of Turkey. [4] [5] [6] There are Kurds living in various provinces of Turkey, but they are primarily concentrated in the east and southeast of the country within the region viewed by Kurds as Turkish Kurdistan.
Turkish Kurdistan or Northern Kurdistan (Kurdish: Bakurê Kurdistanê) is the southeastern part of Turkey [1] where Kurds form the predominant ethnic group.The Kurdish Institute of Paris estimates that there are 20 million Kurds living in Turkey, the majority of them in the southeast.
Kurdish sources claim there are as many as 20 or 25 million Kurds in Turkey. [176] In 1980, Ethnologue estimated the number of Kurdish-speakers in Turkey at around five million, [177] when the country's population stood at 44 million. [178]
Kurdish sources put the figure at 10 [12] to 15 million Kurds in Turkey. [13] Kurds mostly live in Northern Kurdistan, in Southeastern and Eastern Anatolia. But large Kurdish populations can be found in western Turkey due to internal migration. According to Rüstem Erkan, Istanbul is the province with the largest Kurdish population in Turkey. [14]
Another phenomenon found in the research was that Zazas are closer to Kurdish groups (matrilineally South Caucasian groups, patrilineally Kurmanji speakers in Turkey) rather than peoples of Northern Iran, where ancestral Zaza language hypothesized to be spoken before its spread to Anatolia. It was also stated that "the genetic evidence of ...
In November 2012, about 10,000 Kurdish prisoners joined the hunger strike, calling for better detention conditions for Öcalan, the right to use the Kurdish language in trials, and the start of peace negotiations between Turkey and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). [33] The strike lasted for sixty-eight days until Öcalan demanded its end.
The Sheikh Said rebellion was the first large scale rebellion of the Kurdish race movement in Turkey. The main organizer of this rebellion was the Kurdish Independent Society, Azadî. Azadi's intention was to liberate Kurds from Turkish oppression and thus deliver freedom and further, develop their country.
The Republic of Turkey has an official policy in place that denies the existence of the Kurds as a distinct ethnicity. The Kurds, who are a people that speak various dialects of Northwestern Iranic languages, have historically constituted the demographic majority in southeastern Turkey (or "Turkish Kurdistan") and their independent national aspirations have stood at the forefront of the long ...