ABSTRACT
The Kurds are frequently referred to as the world’s largest contiguously located ethno-linguistic or cultural group without a state of their own. They also constitute the fourth largest ethnic group of the Middle East region, after Arabs, Persians and Turks. Given the absence of reliable, up-to-date and ethnically based censuses in the four countries across which the majority of Kurds are dispersed – Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria – the size of the Kurdish population cannot be given with any precision. The Kurdish population of the four main countries of residence is usually put at around 30 million, around half of them living in Turkey, where they are reckoned to constitute around 20 per cent of its inhabitants. Kurds make up a similar percentage of Iraq’s smaller population, whereas in Iran and Syria the Kurdish population is usually put at 10 per cent or less. There are also small Kurdish populations in Armenia, Georgia, Russia and Lebanon, many of them descended from Kurds fleeing Turkish and Persian oppression during the twentieth century. Assimilation and inter-marriage, and the emergence of significant Kurdish diasporas – notably in western Europe, where perhaps a million and a half Kurds reside, half of them in Germany – adds to the imprecision.
