Particularly this:
Kurds, as a distinct people, who have been a known people in the region since long before the Turks arrived, are divided by country boundaries that never provided self-determination for the Kurds. They are in most of eastern Turkey, northern Syria and Northern Iraq as well as part of Iran. They are neither Turks, nor Arabs, nor Persians, nor Assyrians. Yet they are ruled over by all of them.
Kurds are the local residents, and they have a little trouble putting up with the Ottoman Turks showing up with a bad attitude.
It goes back that far.
“Kurds are the local residents, and they have a little trouble putting up with the Ottoman Turks showing up with a bad attitude.”
They actually fared better under the Ottomans (as did the Arabs in Iraq, Anatolia (Turkey) and Syria. The Ottomans left a lot to the local ethnic leaders as long as they did not raise up militant/military type opposition to the Ottomans. But that changed in Turky, Syria and Iraq after the fall of the Ottoman empire. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the Kurds of Anatolia (Turkey), Syria and Iraq became a “minority” to keep under control.
As much as the leading political party in the Kurdish gpvernment in the Kurdish region/province of Iraq does not see eye-to-eye with the PKK militants that Turkey fights, the northern Iraq Kurds have to admit that it is only due to their persistant militance against the gpovernments in Baghdad that they have their own province in Iraq today. They must see that the PKK sees the Kurdish dominant areas of Turkey no differently than the Kurds of Iraq see themselves - deserving to rule themselves. We can argue about their politics (and on that I would not agree on all things with the PKK), but I think their general purpose is clear.
Kurds claim they all descend from the Yazidis (Ezidi’s).
Yazidi’s do not take converts and do not approve of marriage outside their group.
For 7 years I followed their struggle in N. Syria and in Iraq and Turkey.
I like them. Had close friends there. Some of them are gone (dead). They lost over 10,000 lives fighting to end ISIS.
My knowledge of their history came from those I knew in N. Syria. Many came to Syria largely during purges in Iraq and in Turkey.