ABSTRACT
The Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq have seen more than 20 years of serious conflict, with severe human cost for its people. So that the reader may tackle the legislative and humanitarian dimension of the conflict in the following chapters, this first chapter provides a brief history of the people living in the region and the circumstances of the conflict. Key demographic, historical and political contexts will be introduced, and the main actors in the conflict analysed. It then examines some of the features of the last two decades of violence in the region, providing the factual resources to engage with the legal and political issues that follow.
