Ancient history Various groups, among them the
Guti,
Hurrians, Mannai (
Mannaeans), and
Armenians, lived in this region in antiquity. The original Mannaean homeland was situated east and south of the
Lake Urmia, roughly centered around modern-day
Mahabad. The region came under
Persian rule during the reign of
Cyrus the Great and
Darius I. The Kingdom of
Corduene, which emerged from the declining
Seleucid Empire, was located to the south and south-east of
Lake Van between Persia and Mesopotamia and ruled northern Mesopotamia and southeastern
Anatolia from 189 BC to AD 384 as vassals of the vying
Parthian and
Roman empires. Corduene became a
vassal state of the
Roman Republic in 66 BC and remained allied with the Romans until AD 384. After 66 BC, it passed another 5 times between
Rome and Persia. Corduene was situated to the east of
Tigranocerta, that is, to the east and south of present-day
Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey. Some historians have correlated a connection between Corduene with the modern names of Kurds and Kurdistan;
T. A. Sinclair and other scholars have dismissed this identification as false, while a common association is asserted in the
Columbia Encyclopedia. Some of the ancient districts of Kurdistan and their corresponding modern names: • Corduene or Gordyene (
Siirt,
Bitlis and
Şırnak) •
Sophene (Diyarbakır) • Zabdicene or Bezabde (''Gozarto d'Qardu
or Jazirat Ibn'' or
Cizre) • Basenia (
Bayazid) •
Moxoene (
Muş) • Nephercerta (
Miyafarkin) • Artemita (
Van) One of the earliest records of the phrase
land of the Kurds is found in an
Assyrian Christian document of
late antiquity, describing the stories of Assyrian saints of the
Middle East, such as
Abdisho. When the
Sasanian Marzban asked Mar Abdisho about his place of origin, he replied that according to his parents, they were originally from
Hazza, a village in
Assyria. However, they were later driven out of Hazza by
pagans, and settled in
Tamanon, which according to Abdisho was in the
land of the Kurds. Tamanon lies just north of the modern Iraq-Turkey border, while Hazza is 12 km southwest of modern
Erbil. In another passage in the same document, the region of the
Khabur River is also identified as
land of the Kurds. According to
Al-Muqaddasi and
Yaqut al-Hamawi, Tamanon was located on the south-western or southern slopes of
Mount Judi and south of
Cizre. Other geographical references to the Kurds in
Syriac sources appear in
Zuqnin chronicle, writings of
Michael the Syrian and
Bar Hebraeus. They mention the mountains of Qardu, city of Qardu and country of Qardawaye.
Post-classical history (mountains of northeastern Mesopotamia), highlighting "Summer and winter resorts of the Kurds", the Kurdish lands. Redrawn from
Ibn Hawqal, 977 CE. 's
Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk (1072–74), included Kurdistan. 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. The emirates included
Baban,
Soran,
Badinan and
Garmiyan in the south; Bakran, Bohtan (or Botan) and
Badlis in the north, and
Mukriyan and
Ardalan in the east. The earliest medieval attestation of the
toponym Kurdistan is found in a 12th-century
Armenian historical text by
Matteos Urhayeci. He described a battle near
Amid and
Siverek in 1062 as to have taken place in
Kurdistan. The second record occurs in the prayer from the
colophon of an Armenian manuscript of the
Gospels, written in 1200. A later use of the term
Kurdistan is found in
Empire of Trebizond documents in 1336 and in
Nuzhat al-Qulub, written by
Hamdallah Mustawfi in 1340.,
Winston Churchill, for an autonomous region of Kurdistan. '', the first Muslim atlas, showing Kurdistan in blue According to Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi in his
Sharafnama, the boundaries of the Kurdish land begin at the
Strait of Hormuz in the
Persian Gulf and stretch on an even line to the end of
Malatya and
Marash.
Evliya Çelebi, who traveled in the region between 1640 and 1655, mentioned that Kurdistan includes
Erzurum,
Van,
Hakkari,
Cizre,
Imaddiya,
Mosul,
Shahrizor,
Harir,
Ardalan,
Baghdad, Derne, Derteng, until
Basra. In the 16th century, after prolonged wars, Kurdish-inhabited areas were split between the
Safavid and
Ottoman empires. A major division of Kurdistan occurred in the aftermath of the
Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and was formalized in the 1639
Treaty of Zuhab. In a geography textbook of late Ottoman military school by
Ahmet Cevad Kurdistan span over the cities
Erzurum,
Van,
Urfa,
Sulaymanyah,
Kirkuk,
Mosul and
Diyarbakir among others and was one out of six regions of Ottoman Asia.
Modern history After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the
Allies contrived to split Kurdistan (as detailed in the ultimately unratified
Treaty of Sèvres) among several countries, including Kurdistan,
Armenia and others. However, the reconquest of these areas by the forces of
Kemal Atatürk (and other pressing issues) caused the Allies to accept the renegotiated
Treaty of Lausanne (1923) and the borders of the modern Republic of Turkey, leaving the Kurds without a self-ruled region. Other Kurdish areas were assigned to the new British and French
mandated states of
Iraq and
Syria. At the
San Francisco Peace Conference of 1945, the Kurdish delegation proposed consideration of territory claimed by the Kurds, which encompassed an area extending from the Mediterranean shores near
Adana to the shores of the
Persian Gulf near
Bushehr, and included the
Lur inhabited areas of southern
Zagros. The historian
Jordi Tejel has identified "Greater Kurdistan" as being one of the "Kurdish myths" that the
Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS) were involved in promoting to Kurds in Syria. An academic source published by the
University of Cambridge has described maps of greater Kurdistan created in the 1940s and forward as: "These maps have become some of the most influential propaganda tools for the Kurdish nationalist discourse. They depict a territorially exaggerated version of the territory of Kurdistan, extending into areas with no majority Kurdish populations. Despite their production with political aims related to specific claims on the demographic and ethnographic structure of the region, and their questionable methodologies, they have become 'Kurdistan in the minds of Kurds' and the boundaries they indicate have been readily accepted." At the end of the 1991
Gulf War, the
Coalition established a
no-fly zone over northern Iraq to provide humanitarian relief to and safeguard the Kurds who would be subjected to Iraqi air attacks. Amid the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from three northern provinces,
Kurdistan Region emerged in 1992 as an autonomous entity inside Iraq with its own local government and parliament. A 2010 US report, written before the instability in Syria and Iraq that exists as of 2014, attested that "Kurdistan may exist by 2030". The weakening of the Iraqi state following the
2014 Northern Iraq offensive by the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has also presented an opportunity for independence for Iraqi Kurdistan, In an attempt to
deny their existence, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as "
Mountain Turks" until 1991. The words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", or "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government. Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, political parties that represented Kurdish interests were banned. In 1983, the Kurdish provinces were included in the
state of emergency region, which was placed under
martial law in response to the activities of the militant separatist organization the
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). A
guerrilla war took place through the 1980s and 1990s in which much of the countryside was evacuated,
thousands of Kurdish villages were destroyed by the government, and numerous
summary executions were carried out by both sides. Food embargoes were placed on Kurdish villages and towns. Tens of thousands were killed in the violence and hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes. Turkey has historically feared that a Kurdish state in Northern Iraq would encourage and support Kurdish separatists in the adjacent Turkish provinces, and have therefore historically strongly opposed Kurdish independence in Iraq. However, following the chaos in Iraq after
the US invasion, Turkey has increasingly worked with the autonomous
Kurdistan Regional Government. The word 'Kurdistan', whether written or spoken, can still lead to detention and prosecution in Turkey. Kurdistan has been characterized as an "international colony" by the scholar
Ismail Besikci.
Iraqi Kurdistan The successful
2014 Northern Iraq offensive by the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), and the resultant weakening of the ability of the Iraqi state to project power at the time, also presented a "golden opportunity" for the Kurds to increase their independence and possibly declare an independent Kurdish state. 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. On 28 June 2014
Hüseyin Çelik, a spokesman for the ruling
Justice and Development Party (AKP), made comments to the
Financial Times indicating Turkey's readiness to accept an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. This became increasingly less likely, however, when in July 2017, the Iraqi government declared victory in the
Battle of Mosul against ISIS in the group’s last stronghold in the country. Following this, in September 2017, Iraqi Kurds held a one-sided
independence referendum which eventually triggered a
military operation wherein the Iraqi government forces attacked the Kurds, defeating them and forcing them to abandon the referendum. A month later, Iraq declared full victory over ISIS and re-established control over all previously occupied territory. Following the Kurds’ failed attempt to achieve independence, the government of Iraq has exacted severe punishment against KRI in a number of punitive measures. In 2017, the Israeli government openly voiced support for the establishment of an independent Kurdish state in Iraq following the unilateral independence referendum. Some Kurdish officials in Iraq have described this as evidence of the Iraqi government’s aim to return to a centralised political system and abandon the federal system it adopted in 2005. In a leaked letter published by
Al-Monitor in September 2023,
Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of KRG warned about an imminent collapse of the
federal model in Iraq (i.e. a return to
centralism) and urged the United States to intervene, saying: "I write to you now at another critical juncture in our history, one that I fear we may have difficulty overcoming. …[W]e are bleeding economically and hemorrhaging politically. For the first time in my tenure as prime minister, I hold grave concerns that this dishonorable campaign against us may cause the collapse of … the very model of a Federal Iraq that the United States sponsored in 2003 and purported to stand by since." According to a report published in 2024 by the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Kurdistan Region's autonomy "hangs in the balance" due to several punitive measures imposed against the former by the government of Iraq in an effort to punish it and ultimately strip it completely of its autonomy.
Syrian Civil War Various sources have reported that
Al-Nusra issued a
fatwa calling for Kurdish women and children in Syria to be killed, and the fighting in Syria has led tens of thousands of refugees to flee to
Iraq's Kurdistan region. As of 2015, Turkey was actively supporting Al-Nusra, but as of January 2017, Turkey's foreign ministry has said that Al-Nusra is a terrorist group and has acted accordingly. == People ==