The Kurds are an ethnic group without a state of their own. Their population is spread across Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Armenia. A majority of Kurds belong to the Shafi’i school of Sunni Islam.
After World War I and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 omitted the provision, leaving the Kurds with a minority status in their respective countries. The Treaty also set the boundaries of modern Turkey.
The Syrian Kurdish population is small and is concentrated in northern Syria. Democratic Forces was officially founded in northern Syria in 2015, to defend its area amid Syria’s civil war and the rising Islamic State. Its militia, YPG, is made up of ethnic Kurds. It was the United States, which encouraged the formation of the SDF and partnered with it to fight against the Islamic State.
The Kurds have been denied rights within Turkey since the founding of the country in 1923. The Kurds of Turkey formed the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK with the goal of establishing an independent Kurdish state. The PKK has been involved in an armed conflict with the Turkish state and came to be branded a terrorist group in Turkey.
Turkey became wary of the SDF, the Kurdish group in Syria, as it continued to expand its territory in northern Syria with which Turkey shares in border. The PKK also has links with the Syrian Kurds.
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