ABSTRACT
Ethnic groups are viewed as organic, static, substantive, distinct, homogeneous and bounded units whose objective characteristics or identity markers that simultaneously define them and set them apart from other groups are observable and, to a certain extent, empirically measurable. Since the Gulf War of 1991 sparked global interest in their fate of the Kurds, most writers, both scholarly and popular, have denoted the Kurds as the world's largest ethnic group without a state and the world's largest stateless nation. Although on the whole embracing a modernist understanding of nationalism, explanatory International Relations habitually uses the concepts of ethnic and ethno-nationalist conflict interchangeably. In the eyes of ethno-nationalist elites, unity, or at least maintaining the pretence of it, is the single most important goal and interest that constitutes and defines a nation or ethnic community. Human beings can only fulfil themselves and flourish if they belong to a national community, the membership of which overrides all other forms of belonging.
