[Facts] Who are the Kurds?

-- The Kurds are a non-Arab, mainly Sunni Muslim people, speaking a language related to Persian and living in a mountainous area straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
-- For most of their history they have been subjugated. In modern times Iran, Iraq and Turkey have resisted an independent Kurdish state and the Western powers have seen no reason to help establish one. -- Perhaps the most famous of all Kurds is Saladin (1138–1193), who gained fame during the Crusades as one of the greatest rulers in Islamic history.
-- Contemporary Kurdish nationalism stirred in the 1890s when the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which imposed a settlement and colonial carve-up of Turkey after World War One, promised them independence.

-- Three years after the 1920 Treaty of Sevres promised independence to Turkey's Kurds, Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk tore up the document. Kurdish revolts in the 1920s and 1930s were put down by Turkish forces. The Kurds were not recognized as a separate people or allowed to speak their language in public until 1991.
-- The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), named in 1978, took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the southeast. Since then more than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
-- PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured in 1999, tried and sentenced to death. That was reduced to life imprisonment in October 2002 after Turkey abolished the death penalty. -- Fighting eased after Ocalan's capture, leading to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of rebel fighters from Turkey. Ocalan put new emphasis on seeking Kurdish rights through political, rather than armed struggle.
-- Today, some 3,000 Turkish PKK fighters are based in northern Iraq and launch attacks on security and civilian targets in Turkish territory. A few thousand PKK rebels are also believed to be inside Turkey
-- Around 40 Turkish soldiers have been killed in fighting in the past month alone. Erdogan's government is under heavy domestic pressure to pursue the PKK into northern Iraq.
-- Turkey has mobilized some 200,000 soldiers to the southeast, half of them along Turkey's border with Iraq, to stop PKK fighters crossing into Turkey from mountain bases in northern Iraq.
-- The Kurds fared little better in northern Iraq where, under a British mandate, revolts were quashed in 1919, 1923 and 1932.
-- Under leader Mustafa Barzani, the Iraqi Kurds waged an intermittent struggle against Baghdad after World War Two.
-- Kurdish northern Iraq won autonomy from Saddam Hussein with U.S. help in 1991, and has benefited from more than a decade of economic development. There has been some violence but it has not approached the levels seen in Baghdad.
-- Saddam's fall deepened the desire for autonomy and in September 2006 the president of Iraq's Kurdistan ordered the Kurdish flag to be flown on government buildings instead of the Iraqi national flag.
*Twice as many Kurds live in Iran as Iraq, but the national movement has had much less success, with a series of Kurdish leaders put to death by the Iranian government.
*Ismail Agha Simko led a major revolt in the 1920s but was killed by the Iranian government in 1930.
*In 1946, the Iranian Kurds established a short-lived Kurdish Republic, the only one in the 20th century. After destroying the state, Iran hanged its president, Qasi Muhammad, in March 1947.
*In 1981, Ayatollah Khomeini’s forces quashed an attempted revolt by the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI). In 1989, Iranian agents assassinated KDPI leader Abdul Rahman Ghassemlou in Austria. His successor,Sadegh Sharafkiandi was assassinated at a restaurant in Germany in 1992.
*There are around one million Kurds in Syria who live in separate parts of the country and are poorly organized.
*Syria's Baathist regime has denied citizenship to many Kurds and bans Kurdish cultural centers, bookshops and similar activities. A 1992 decree prohibits the registration of children with Kurdish first names.
*It has been suspected that in return for giving Turkish rebels sanctuary in Syria for many years, the PKK has kept a lid on any Kurdish unrest in the country