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Kurdistan (, ; ), or Greater Kurdistan, Turkey demands Google remove Greater Kurdistan map by Rudaw, December 25, 2018 is a roughly defined geo-cultural region in West Asia wherein the Kurds form a prominent majority population (2025). 9789004161900, BRILL. ISBN 9789004161900 and the Kurdish culture, languages, and national identity have historically been based.M. T. O'Shea, Trapped between the map and reality: geography and perceptions of Kurdistan, 258 pp., Routledge, 2004. (see p. 77) Geographically, Kurdistan roughly encompasses the northwestern Zagros Mountains and the eastern Taurus Mountains mountain ranges.
Kurdistan generally comprises the following four regions: southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Iraqi Kurdistan), northwestern Iran (Eastern Kurdistan), and northern Syria (Syrian Kurdistan). Some definitions also include parts of southern South Caucasus. Certain Kurdish nationalist organizations seek to create an independent nation state consisting of some or all of these areas with a Kurdish majority, while others campaign for greater autonomy within the existing national boundaries.Hamit Bozarslan “The Kurdish Question: Can it be solved within Europe?”, page 84 “The years of silence and of renewal” in Olivier Roy, ed. Turkey Today: A European Country?. The delineation of the region remains disputed and varied, with some maps greatly exaggerating its boundaries.
Historically, the word "Kurdistan" is first attested in 11th century Seljuk Empire chronicles. Many disparate Kurdish dynasties, emirates, principalities, and chiefdoms were established from the 8th to 19th centuries. Administratively, the 20th century saw the establishment of the short-lived areas of the Kurdish state (1918–1919), Kingdom of Kurdistan (1921–1924), Kurdistansky Uyezd i.e. "Red Kurdistan" (1923–1929), Republic of Ararat (1927–1930), and Republic of Mahabad (1946).
In Iraq, following the Aylūl Revolt, the government entered into an agreement with the rebellious Kurds, granting Kurds local self-rule. Soon after, however, the agreement collapsed. Later, during the Iraqi no-fly zones conflict, which followed the Gulf War, the Iraqi military withdrew from parts of northern Iraq, allowing the Kurds to fill the vacuum and regain lost control in those areas. After the invasion of Iraq, and since the creation of the new Iraqi federalism, the new constitution issued in 2005 recognises Kurdistan Region as a federal region;Iraqi Constitution, Article 117 even though the constitution does not include the term “autonomy”, it emphasises decentralisation and devolution, allowing regions and governorates to administer local affairs. In practice, however, only Kurdistan Region has exercised this authority granted by the constitution. In September 2017, Iraqi Kurds held a one-sided independence referendum, which eventually failed and was abandoned. The subsequent effort by the Iraqi government to punish Kurdistan Region has resulted in the latter losing authorities it had previously possessed, and the future of Kurdish autonomy in Iraq has been called into question. Iraqi Kurdish officials have also complained of efforts by the Iraqi government to return to the pre-2003 centralized government and dismantle Kurdistan Region altogether.
There is also a Kurdistan province in Iran, which is not self-ruled. Kurds fighting in the Syrian civil war, under the banner of the Syrian Democratic forces, established the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (commonly called Rojava), a self-governing administration which seeks to retain its autonomy in a proposed federalized Syria.
"Kurdistan" was also formerly spelled Curdistan.The Edinburgh Encyclopædia, conducted by D. Brewster—Page 511, Original from Oxford University—published 1830An Account of the State of Roman-Catholick Religion, Sir Richard Steele, Published 1715 One of the ancient names of this region was Corduene.N. Maxoudian, "Early Armenia as an Empire: The Career of Tigranes III, 95–55 BC", Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, Vol. 39, Issue 2, April 1952, pp. 156–63.A.D. Lee, The Role of Hostages in Roman Diplomacy with Sasanian Persia, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Vol. 40, No. 3 (1991), pp. 366–74 (see p. 371) The 19th-century Kurdistan Eyalet was the first time that the Ottoman Empire used the term 'Kurdistan' to refer to an administrative unit rather than a geographical region.
Albeit admitting a thorough delineation is difficult, the Encyclopaedia of Islam delineated Kurdistan as following: Many of the maps delineating Kurdistan are greatly exaggerated, also incorporating non-Kurdish regions, which has made the subject very controversial.
The Kingdom of Corduene, which emerged from the declining Seleucid Empire, was located to the south and south-east of Lake Van between Persia and Mesopotamia and ruled northern Mesopotamia and southeastern Anatolia from 189 BC to AD 384 as vassals of the vying Parthian Empire and Roman Empire empires. Corduene became a vassal state of the Roman Republic in 66 BC and remained allied with the Romans until AD 384. After 66 BC, it passed another 5 times between Ancient Rome and Persia. Corduene was situated to the east of Tigranocerta, that is, to the east and south of present-day Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey.
Some historians have correlated a connection between Corduene with the modern names of Kurds and Kurdistan;Rawlinson, George, The Seven Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World, Vol. 7, 1871. (copy at Project Gutenberg)Revue des études arméniennes, vol. 21, 1988–1989, p. 281, by Société des études armeniennes, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Published by Imprimerie nationale, P. Geuthner, 1989. T. A. Sinclair and other scholars have dismissed this identification as false,T. A. Sinclair, "Eastern Turkey, an Architectural and Archaeological Survey", 1989, volume 3, page 360.Mark Marciak Sophene, Gordyene, and Adiabene: Three Regna Minora of Northern Mesopotamia Between East and West, 2017. [5] pp. 220-221Victoria Arekelova, Garnik S. Asatryan Prolegomena To The Study Of The Kurds, Iran and The Caucasus, 2009 [6] pp. 82I. Gershevitch, The Cambridge history of Iran: The Saljuq and Mongol periods, Vol. 5, 762 pp., Cambridge University Press, 1968. (see p. 237 for "Rawwadids") while a common association is asserted in the Columbia Encyclopedia. Kurds, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001.
Some of the ancient districts of Kurdistan and their corresponding modern names:J. Bell, A System of Geography. Popular and Scientific (A Physical, Political, and Statistical Account of the World and Its Various Divisions), pp. 133–4, Vol. IV, Fullarton & Co., Glasgow, 1832.
One of the earliest records of the phrase land of the Kurds is found in an Assyrian people Christian document of late antiquity, describing the stories of Assyrian saints of the Middle East, such as Abdisho. When the Sasanian Marzban asked Mar Abdisho about his place of origin, he replied that according to his parents, they were originally from Hazza, a village in Assyria. However, they were later driven out of Hazza by pagans, and settled in Tamanon, which according to Abdisho was in the land of the Kurds. Tamanon lies just north of the modern Iraq-Turkey border, while Hazza is 12 km southwest of modern Erbil. In another passage in the same document, the region of the Khabur River is also identified as land of the Kurds.J. T. Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq (368 pages), University of California Press, , 2006, pp. 26, 52, 108. According to Al-Muqaddasi and Yaqut al-Hamawi, Tamanon was located on the south-western or southern slopes of Mount Judi and south of Cizre.T. A. Sinclair, "Eastern Turkey, an Architectural and Archaeological Survey", Vol. 3, Pindar Press, , 1989, page 337. Other geographical references to the Kurds in Syriac sources appear in Zuqnin Chronicle chronicle, writings of Michael the Syrian and Bar Hebraeus. They mention the mountains of Qardu, city of Qardu and country of Qardawaye.
Kurdistan in the Middle Ages was a collection of semi-independent and independent states called . It was nominally under indirect political or religious influence of or . A comprehensive history of these states and their relationship with their neighbors is given in the text of Sharafnama, written by Prince Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi in 1597.For a list of these entities see Kurdistan and its native Provincial subdivisions The emirates included Baban, Soran Emirate, Badinan Emirate and Garmiyan in the south; Bakran, Bohtan (or Botan) and Badlis in the north, and Mukriyan and Ardalan in the east.
The earliest medieval attestation of the toponym Kurdistan is found in a 12th-century Armenian historical text by Matteos Urhayeci. He described a battle near Amid and Siverek in 1062 as to have taken place in Kurdistan.Matt'eos Urhayec'i, Ժամանակագրություն (Chronicle), ed. by M. Melik-Adamyan et al., Erevan, 1991. (p. 156)G. Asatrian, Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds, Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 13, pp. 1–58, 2009. (see p. 19) The second record occurs in the prayer from the colophon of an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels, written in 1200.A.S. Mat'evosyan, Colophons of the Armenian Manuscripts, Erevan, 1988. (p. 307)G. Asatrian, Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds, Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 13, pp. 1–58, 2009. (p. 20)
A later use of the term Kurdistan is found in Empire of Trebizond documents in 1336Zehiroglu, Ahmet M. "Trabzon Imparatorlugu" 2016 (); p. 169 and in Nuzhat al-Qulub, written by Hamdallah Mustawfi in 1340.G. Asatrian, Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds, Iran and the Caucasus, Vol. 13, pp. 1–58, 2009. (see p. 20), Winston Churchill, for an autonomous region of Kurdistan.]] According to Sharaf al-Din Bitlisi in his Sharafnama, the boundaries of the Kurdish land begin at the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and stretch on an even line to the end of Malatya and Marash. Evliya Çelebi, who traveled in the region between 1640 and 1655, mentioned that Kurdistan includes Erzurum, Van, Hakkari, Cizre, Amadiya, Mosul, Shahrizor, Harir, Ardalan, Baghdad, Derne, Derteng, until Basra.
In the 16th century, after prolonged wars, Kurdish-inhabited areas were split between the Safavid Empire and Ottoman Empire empires. A major division of Kurdistan occurred in the aftermath of the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514, and was formalized in the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab.C. Dahlman, "The Political Geography of Kurdistan", Eurasian Geography and Economics, Vol.43, No.4, pp.271–299, 2002. In a geography textbook of late Ottoman military school by Ahmet Cevad Kurdistan span over the cities Erzurum, Van, Urfa, Sulaymaniyah, Kirkuk, Mosul and Diyarbakir among others and was one out of six regions of Ottoman Asia.
At the San Francisco Peace Conference of 1945, the Kurdish delegation proposed consideration of territory claimed by the Kurds, which encompassed an area extending from the Mediterranean shores near Adana to the shores of the Persian Gulf near Bushehr, and included the Lurs inhabited areas of southern Zagros.C. Dahlman, The Political Geography of Kurdistan, Eurasian Geography and Economics, Vol.43, No.4, p. 274.
The historian Jordi Tejel has identified "Greater Kurdistan" as being one of the "Kurdish myths" that the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Syria (KDPS) were involved in promoting to Kurds in Syria.
An academic source published by the University of Cambridge has described maps of greater Kurdistan created in the 1940s and forward as: "These maps have become some of the most influential propaganda tools for the Kurdish nationalist discourse. They depict a territorially exaggerated version of the territory of Kurdistan, extending into areas with no majority Kurdish populations. Despite their production with political aims related to specific claims on the demographic and ethnographic structure of the region, and their questionable methodologies, they have become 'Kurdistan in the minds of Kurds' and the boundaries they indicate have been readily accepted."
At the end of the 1991 Gulf War, the Coalition established a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to provide humanitarian relief to and safeguard the Kurds who would be subjected to Iraqi air attacks. Amid the withdrawal of Iraqi forces from three northern provinces, Kurdistan Region emerged in 1992 as an autonomous entity inside Iraq with its own local government and parliament. (2025). 9780415302784, RoutledgeCurzon. ISBN 9780415302784
A 2010 US report, written before the instability in Syria and Iraq that exists as of 2014, attested that "Kurdistan may exist by 2030". The weakening of the Iraqi state following the 2014 Northern Iraq offensive by the Islamic State has also presented an opportunity for independence for Iraqi Kurdistan, augmented by Turkey's move towards acceptance of such a state although it opposes moves toward Kurdish autonomy in Turkey and Syria.
In an attempt to deny their existence, the Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until 1991.Bartkus, Viva Ona, The Dynamic of Secession, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 90–1. The words "Kurds", "Kurdistan", or "Kurdish" were officially banned by the Turkish government. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish language was officially prohibited in public and private life.Toumani, Meline. Minority Rules, New York Times, 17 February 2008 Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, political parties that represented Kurdish interests were banned.
In 1983, the Kurdish provinces were included in the OHAL, which was placed under martial law in response to the activities of the militant separatist organization the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).Kurd, The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia including Atlas, 2005"[10], NY Times, 28 September 2007 A guerrilla war took place through the 1980s and 1990s in which much of the countryside was evacuated, thousands of Kurdish villages were destroyed by the government, and numerous summary executions were carried out by both sides.Martin van Bruinessen, "Kurdistan." The Oxford Companion to the Politics of the World, 2nd edition. Joel Krieger, ed. Oxford University Press, 2001. Food embargoes were placed on Kurdish villages and towns. Tens of thousands were killed in the violence and hundreds of thousands were forced to leave their homes." Kurdish rebels kill Turkey troops", BBC News, 8 May 2007
Turkey has historically feared that a Kurdish state in Northern Iraq would encourage and support Kurdish separatists in the adjacent Turkish provinces, and have therefore historically strongly opposed Kurdish independence in Iraq. However, following the chaos in Iraq after the US invasion, Turkey has increasingly worked with the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. The word 'Kurdistan', whether written or spoken, can still lead to detention and prosecution in Turkey. Kurdistan has been characterized as an "international colony" by the scholar Ismail Besikci.
Turkish Kurdistan encompasses a large area of Eastern Anatolia Region and southeastern Anatolia of Turkey and it is home to an estimated 6 to 8 million Kurds.
The northern, northwestern and northeastern parts of Kurdistan are referred to as upper Kurdistan, and includes the areas from west of Amed to Lake Urmia.
The lowlands of southern Kurdistan are called lower Kurdistan. The main cities in this area are Kirkuk and Arbil.
The region north of the mountainous region on the border with Iran and Turkey features meadow grasses and such wild trees as, Abies cilicica, Fagus sylvatica, Quercus calliprinos, Quercus brantii, Quercus infectoria, Quercus ithaburensis, Quercus macranthera, Cupressus sempervirens, Platanus orientalis, Pinus brutia, Juniperus foetidissima, Juniperus excelsa, Juniperus oxycedrus, Prunus cerasus, Salix alba, Fraxinus excelsior, Paliurus spina-christi, Olea europaea, Ficus carica, Populus euphratica, Populus nigra, Crataegus monogyna, Crataegus azarolus, Prunus cerasifera, , Cercis siliquastrum, , pear and Sorbus graeca. The desert in the south is mostly steppe and would feature xeric plants such as Arecaceae, tamarix, date palm, fraxinus, poa, white wormwood and chenopodiaceae.Village on the Euphrates: From Foraging to Farming at Abu Hureyra, by A.M.T Moore, G.C. Hillman and A.J. Legge, Published 2000, Oxford University Press The steppe and desert in the south, by contrast, have such species as Arecaceae and date palm.
Animals found in the region include the Syrian brown bear, wild boar, gray wolf, the golden jackal, Indian crested porcupine, the red fox, goitered gazelle, Eurasian otter, striped hyena, Persian fallow deer, long-eared hedgehog, onager, mangar and the Euphrates softshell turtle.Al-Sheikhly, O.F.; and Nader, I.A. (2013). The Status of the Iraq Smooth-coated Otter Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli Hayman 1956 and Eurasian Otter Lutra lutra Linnaeus 1758 in Iraq. IUCN Otter Spec. Group Bull. 30(1). Birds include, the hooded crow, common starling, Eurasian magpie, European robin, water pipit, spotted flycatcher, namaqua dove, saker falcon, griffon vulture, little crake and collared pratincole, among others.
Rivers
The plateaus and mountains of Kurdistan, which are characterized by heavy rain and snow fall, act as a water reservoir for the Near and Middle East, forming the source of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as well as other numerous smaller rivers, such as the Little Khabur, Khabur, Tharthar, Ceyhan, Araxes, Kura, Sefidrud, Karkha, and Hezil. Among rivers of historical importance to Kurds are the Murat River (Arasān) and Buhtān rivers in Turkey; the Peshkhābur, the Little Zab, the Great Zab, and the Diyala River in Iraq; and the Jaghatu (Zarrinarud), the Tātā'u (Siminarud), the Zohāb (Zahāb), and the Gāmāsiyāb in Iran.
These rivers, which flow from heights of three to four thousand meters above sea level, are significant both as water sources and for the production of energy. Iraq and Syria dammed many of these rivers and their tributaries. Turkey has an extensive dam system under construction as part of the GAP (Southeast Anatolia Project); though incomplete, the GAP already supplies a significant proportion of Turkey's electrical energy needs. Due to the extraordinary archaeological richness of the region, almost any dam impacts historic sites. With the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Turkey was accused of withholding water from the reservoir Lake Assad in Syria, while filling the Atatürk dam in Turkey.
Lakes
Kurdistan extends to Lake Urmia in Iran on the east. The region includes Lake Van, the largest body of water in Turkey; the only lake in the Middle East with a larger surface is Lake Urmia – though not nearly as deep as Lake Van, which has a much larger volume. Lake Urmia, Lake Van, as well as Zarivar Lake west of Marivan, and Lake Dukan near the city of Sulaymaniyah, are frequented by tourists.
Al-Hasakah province, also known as Jazira region, has geopolitical importance of Petroleum and is suitable for agricultural lands.
In November 2011, Exxon challenged the Iraqi central government's authority with the signing of oil and gas contracts for exploration rights to six parcels of land in Kurdistan, including one contract in the disputed territories, just east of the Kirkuk mega-field. This act caused Baghdad to threaten to revoke Exxon's contract in its southern fields, most notably the West-Qurna Phase 1 project. Exxon responded by announcing its intention to leave the West-Qurna project.
As of July 2007, the Kurdish government solicited foreign companies to invest in 40 new oil sites, with the hope of increasing regional oil production over the following five years by a factor of five, to about . Gas and associated gas reserves are in excess of . Notable companies active in Kurdistan include ExxonMobil, Total, Chevron, Talisman Energy, Genel Energy, Hunt Oil, Gulf Keystone Petroleum, and Marathon Oil.
Other mineral resources that exist in significant quantities in the region include coal, copper, gold, iron, limestone (which is used to produce cement), marble, and zinc. The world's largest deposit of rock sulfur is located just southwest of Erbil., Kurdistan Development Corporation.
In July 2012, Turkey and the Kurdistan Region signed an agreement by which Turkey would regularly supply the KRG with refined petroleum products in exchange for crude oil.
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