Are Kurds the same as Turks?

Are Kurds the same as Turks?

Turks are Turkish people. Kurds are one of the ethnic groups of people living in Turkey and many other parts of the world. Turks speak Turkish; Kurds speak two or more languages and are multilingual people. They know and speak the language of the nation they live in like Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Kurdish.

What do Kurds call themselves?

Easterner
Nowadays the Kurds, in Turkey, are still known under the name Easterner (Doğulu). Several large scale Kurdish revolts in 1925, 1930 and 1938 were suppressed by the Turkish government and more than one million Kurds were forcibly relocated between 1925 and 1938.

Are Kurds allowed to speak Kurdish in Turkey?

The words “Kurds”, “Kurdistan”, and “Kurdish” were officially banned by the Turkish government. Currently, it’s illegal to use the Kurdish language as an instruction language in private and public schools, yet there are schools who defy this ban.

What did Turkey do to Kurds?

During the Kurdish–Turkish conflict, food embargoes were placed on Kurdish villages and towns. There were many instances of Kurds being forcibly expelled from their villages by Turkish security forces. Many villages were reportedly set on fire or destroyed.

Who created Kurdistan?

Ahmad Sanjar
Having conquered Iran and imposed their yoke on the caliph of Baghdad, the Seljuq Turks annexed the Kurdish principalities one by one. Around 1150, Ahmad Sanjar, the last of the great Seljuq monarchs, created a province out of these lands and called it Kurdistan.

What language do Turkish Kurds speak?

Kurmanji is the language of the vast majority of Kurds in Turkey, Syria, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, and of a few in Iraq and Iran, with an estimated 15-17 million speakers in total. Sorani is the language of most Kurds in Iraq (4-6 million speakers) and Iran (5-6 million speakers).

How many Kurds are there in Turkey?

According to the World Factbook, Kurdish people make up 18\% of Turkey’s population (about 14 million, out of 77.8 million people). Kurdish sources put the figure at 10 to 15 million Kurds in Turkey.

Where do the Kurds come from originally?

The Kurds are one of the indigenous peoples of the Mesopotamian plains and the highlands in what are now south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, northern Iraq, north-western Iran and south-western Armenia.

Who are Kurds descended from?

The Kurdish people are believed to be of heterogeneous origins combining a number of earlier tribal or ethnic groups including Lullubi, Guti, Cyrtians, Carduchi. Some of them have also absorbed some elements from Semitic, Turkic and Armenian people.

Do Kurds have their own country?

Iraqi Kurdistan first gained autonomous status in a 1970 agreement with the Iraqi government, and its status was re-confirmed as the autonomous Kurdistan Region within the federal Iraqi republic in 2005. There is also a Kurdistan Province in Iran, but it is not self-ruled.