Kurdistan is a nation without a state. So is Palestine. A nation is a group of people who have a strong sense of unity and common conscious...
Kurdistan is a nation without a state. So is Palestine. A nation is a group of people who have a strong sense of unity and common consciousness. Possession of a definite territory and sovereignty are sine qua non for a state but not for a nation. Nations can survive even without sovereignty.
Kurdistan is a nation stretched across many states in West Asia. The Kurdish people, around 40 million in number, inhabit in eastern Turkey, north Iraq, north-western Iran, north-eastern Syria and some territories of Armenia. Around 22 million of Turkey’s 84 million people are Kurdish. Most of Kurdish people are Sunni Muslims and only a few are Christians.
They are the third-largest ethnic group in the West Asia and the largest nation without a state in the world, says Davan Yahya Khalil in his book Kurdistan: Genocide and Rebirth.
A long history
Saladin, the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, has always been the Kurd superhero of the Muslim world. Under Saladin’s command, the Ayyubid army defeated the Crusaders at the decisive Battle of Hattin in 1187, and thereafter wrested control of Palestine – including the city of Jerusalem –from the Crusaders. Thanks to this feat, he is still a messiah in the Islamist imagination. Ibn Taymiyyah, one of the most influential medieval writers...
