Kurds and the PKK

Comprising some thirty to forty million people, the Kurds constitute the fourth largest ethnicity in Western Asia. Divided between Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, Kurdistan is located in the northern part of the Middle East. A sense of national belonging among the Kurds emerged during the course of the twentieth century; it was late and weak by comparison to nationalism among the neighboring Turks, Arabs, and Persians. After the disintegration of the Ottoman empire and the establishment of a new state system in the region from which Turkey, Syria, and Iraq emerged, the Kurds living in those states rebelled on many occasions against physical and cultural genocide. The main Kurdish political actors today are the Kurdistan Regional Government in the north of Iraq, a product of a power-sharing agreement between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan; the Kurdistan Workers' Party; and the affiliated Democratic Union Party