The Kurds

Subject :International relations

Context:

The recent protests in Iran due to the death of a young Iranian Kurdish woman, the 22-year-old MahsaAmini in the custody of Iran’s morality police have intensified.

Who are Kurds:

Kurds are an Iranian ethnic groupnative to the mountainous region of Kurdistan in Western Asia, which spans southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northern Syria.
They make up the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East after Arabs, Persians, and Turks.

Religion followed by Kurds:

Most Kurds are Sunni Muslims who adhere to the Shafiʽi school, while a significant minority adhere to the Hanafi school and also Alevism.
Moreover, many Shafi’i Kurds adhere to either one of the two Sufi orders Naqshbandi and Qadiriyya.
Other religions with significant Kurdish adherents are Yarsanism and Yazidism.

History of Kurds Nationalism:

Kurdish nationalism stirred in the 1890s when the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs.
The 1920 Treaty of Sevres,imposed a settlement and colonial carve-up of Turkey after World War One, promised Kurds independence. But the accord was broken by Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk.
The Treaty of Lausanne, ratified in 1924, divided the Kurds among the new nations of the Middle East.
With the 1946 Republic of Mahabad, a Soviet-backed state stretching over Iran’s border with Turkey and Iraq Kurdish separatism in Iran first bubbled to the surface.
The 1979 Iran’s Islamic Revolution touched off bloodshed in its Kurdistan region with heavy clashes between the Shi’ite revolutionaries and the Kurdish Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) which fought for independence.

What are the demands of Kurds:

The Kurds have never achieved nation-state status,except in Iraq, where they have a regional government called Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Kurds want to establish their independent nation-station Kurdistan which comprises five different regions southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and southwestern Armenia.