Kurdistan in the context of "Romanization of Kurdish"

Kurds (Kurdish: کورد, romanized: Kurd), or the Kurdish people, are an Iranic ethnic group from West Asia. They are indigenous to Kurdistan, which is a geographic region spanning southeastern Turkey, northwestern Iran, northern Iraq, and northeastern Syria. Consisting of 30–45 million people, the global Kurdish population is largely concentrated in Kurdistan, but significant communities of the Kurdish diaspora exist in parts of West Asia beyond Kurdistan and in parts of Europe, most notably including: Turkey's Central Anatolian Kurds, as well as Istanbul Kurds; Iran's Khorasani Kurds; the Caucasian Kurds, primarily in Azerbaijan and Armenia; and the Kurdish populations in various European countries, namely Germany, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

The Kurdish languages and the Zaza–Gorani languages, both of which belong to the Western Iranic branch of the Iranic language family, are the native languages of the Kurdish people. Other widely spoken languages among the community are those of their host countries or neighbouring regions, such as Turkish, Persian, or Arabic. The most prevalent religion among Kurds is Sunni Islam, with Shia Islam and Alevism being significant Islamic minorities. Yazidism, which is the ethnic religion of the Kurdish-speaking Yazidi people, is the largest non-Islamic minority religion among the broader Kurdish community, followed by Yarsanism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity.

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).

The Republic of Turkey had an official policy in place that denies the existence of the Kurds as a distinct ethnicity. The Kurds, who are a people that speak various dialects of Northwestern Iranic languages, have historically constituted the demographic majority in southeastern Turkey (or "Turkish Kurdistan") and their independent national aspirations have stood at the forefront of the long-running Kurdish–Turkish conflict. Insisting that the Kurds, like the Turks, are a Turkic people, Turkish state institutions do not recognize the Kurdish language as a language and also omit the Kurdish ethnonym and the term "Kurdistan" in their discourse. In the 20th century, as the words "Kurd" and "Kurdish" were prohibited by Turkish law, all Kurds were referred to as Mountain Turks (Turkish: Dağ Türkleri) in a wider attempt to portray them as a people who lost their Turkic identity over time by intermingling with Arabs, Armenians, and Persians, among others. More recently, Turkey's opposition to Kurdish independence has defined how it has conducted itself throughout the Middle East, particularly with regard to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Kurdish (Kurdî, کوردی, pronounced [kʊrdiː] ) is a Northwestern Iranian language or group of languages spoken by Kurds in the region of Kurdistan, namely in southeast Turkey, northern Iraq, northwest Iran, and northern Syria. It is also spoken in northeast Iran, as well as in certain areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Kurdish varieties constitute a dialect continuum, with some mutually unintelligible varieties, and collectively have 26 million native speakers. The main varieties of Kurdish are Kurmanji, Sorani, and Southern Kurdish (Xwarîn). The majority of the Kurds speak Kurmanji, and most Kurdish texts are written in Kurmanji and Sorani. Kurmanji is written in the Hawar alphabet, a derivation of the Latin script, and Sorani is written in the Sorani alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script.

Yazidis, also spelled Yezidis (/jəˈziːdiz/ ; Êzidî), are a Kurdish-speaking endogamous religious group indigenous to Kurdistan, a geographical region in Western Asia that includes parts of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and Iran, with small numbers living in Armenia and Georgia. The majority of Yazidis remaining in the Middle East today live in Iraq, primarily in the governorates of Nineveh and Duhok.

There is a disagreement among scholars and in Yazidi circles on whether the Yazidi people are a distinct ethnoreligious group or a religious sub-group of the Kurds, an Iranic ethnic group. Yazidism is the ethnic religion of the Yazidi people. It is monotheistic in nature and syncretic. Having its origin from Adawiyya Sufi order, which blended Sufi Sunni Islam, a local Kurdish veneration of Yazid ibn Mu'awiya and Umayyad dynasty, and local Kurdish peasant belief of pre-Zoroastrian Iranic faith. By the 15th century, Yazidism developed into a distinct religion separate from Islam.

The Kurdish population is estimated to be between 30 and 45 million. Most Kurdish people live in Kurdistan, which today is split between Iranian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkish Kurdistan, and Syrian Kurdistan.

The Kakuyids (also called Kakwayhids, Kakuwayhids or Kakuyah) (Persian: آل کاکویه) were a Shia Muslim dynasty of Daylamite origin that held power in western Persia, Jibal and Kurdistan (c. 1008–c. 1051). They later became atabegs (governors) of Yazd, Isfahan and Abarkuh from c. 1051 to 1141. They were related to the Buyids.

Qizilbash or Kizilbash were a diverse array of mainly Turkoman Shia militant groups that flourished in Azerbaijan, Anatolia, Kurdistan, the Armenian highlands, and the Caucasus from the late 15th century onwards, and contributed to the foundation of the Safavid dynasty in early modern Iran.

By the 18th-century, anyone involved with the Safavid state—militarily, diplomatically, or administratively—came to be broadly referred to as "Qizilbash". It was eventually applied to some inhabitants of Iran. In the early 19th-century, Shia Muslims from Iran could be referred as "Qizilbash", thus highlighting the influence of the distinctive traits of the Safavids, despite the Iranian shah (king) Fath-Ali Shah Qajar (r. 1797–1834) simultaneously creating a Qajar dynastic identity grounded in the pre-Islamic past.