Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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.
Kurdish-inhabited areas in the Middle East (1992) Maunsell's map of 1910, a pre-World War I British ethnographical map of the Middle East, showing the Kurdish regions in yellow (both light and dark) Kurdish (Kurdish: Kurdî or کوردی) is a collection of related dialects spoken by the Kurds. [50]
This is a list of Kurdish dynasties, countries and autonomous territories. The Kurds are an Iranian people without their own nation state, they inhabit a geo-cultural region known as "Kurdistan" which lies in east Turkey, north Syria, north Iraq and west Iran. (For more information see Origin of the Kurds.) [1] [2]
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 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]
Kurdistan (Kurdish: کوردستان, romanized: Kurdistan, lit. ' land of the Kurds '; [ˌkʊɾdɪˈstɑːn] ⓘ), [5] or Greater Kurdistan, [6] [7] is a roughly defined geo-cultural region in West Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population [8] and the Kurdish culture, languages, and national identity have historically been based. [9]
The Kurdish people have different religions depending on their ethnic connections and the country in which they live. The most common religion among Kurds is Sunni Islam, practiced by 98% of Kurds living in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurds of Turkey are 30% Alevi out of a population of approximately 15–22 million Kurds and 68% follow Sunni Islam. [12]
In Turkey, different estimations exist on the Kurdish Alevi population.While Dressler and several other academics stated that about one third [5] or fifth [11] of the Alevi population is Kurdish, respectively, Hamza Aksüt argued in 2015 that a majority of the Alevi population is Kurdish.