Kurdish Institute of Paris in the context of "Kendal Nezan"

Turkish Kurdistan or Northern Kurdistan (Kurdish: Bakurê Kurdistanê) is the southeastern part of Turkey where Kurds form the predominant ethnic group. The Kurdish Institute of Paris estimates that there are 20 million Kurds living in Turkey, the majority of them in the southeast.

Southeastern Turkey (Northern Kurdistan) is considered to be one of the four parts of Kurdistan, which also includes parts of northern Syria (Western Kurdistan), northern Iraq (Southern Kurdistan) and northwestern Iran (Eastern Kurdistan).

Yılmaz Güney (né Pütün; 1 April 1937 – 9 September 1984) was a Turkish-Kurdish film director, screenwriter, novelist, actor and communist political activist. He quickly rose to prominence in the Turkish film industry. Many of his works were made from a far-left perspective and devoted to the plight of working-class people in Turkey. Güney won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1982 for the film Yol (The Road) which he co-directed with Şerif Gören. He was at constant odds with the Turkish government over the portrayal of Kurdish culture, people and language.

After being convicted of killing judge Sefa Mutlu in 1974 (a charge which he denied), Güney fled the country and was later stripped of his citizenship. A year before his death in 1983, he co-founded the Kurdish Institute of Paris together with the Kurdish poets Cegerxwîn and Hejar among others.