Kurdistan is a region that has existed in turmoil and is the "never was- country. The Kurds are the fourth largest ethnic group of the Middle East, numbering between 20 and 25 million. Approximately 15 million live in the regions of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, an area they called Kurdistan, yet they do not have a country of their own. Formal attempts to establish such a state were crushed by the larger and more powerful countries in the region after both world wars. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed after World War I, the Kurds were promised their own independent nation under the Treaty of Sevres. In 1923 however, the treaty was broken allowing Turkey to maintain its status and not allowing the Kurdish people to have a nation to call their own. The end of the Gulf war, Iran-Iraq war, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the cold war has reinvigorated a Kurdish Nationalist movement. .
The movement is a powder keg ready to explode. With the majority of Kurds living within its boundaries, no country faces this threat more than Turkey. Because of Turkey's concept of unified, cohesive nationhood-in which the existence of minorities are not acknowledged- these tensions in Turkey are more difficult to handle than else where. In southeastern Turkey, extreme fighting and guerilla tactics are used by the Kurds in support of their political parties. The Turkish military is actively stationed in this area now.
There are several political parties that represent the needs of the Kurdish people. They are the Kurdistan's Workers Party (PKK) who represent the needs of Turkish Kurds and are the most violent terrorist like group, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) who is active politically but not militarily, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) composed of Iraqi Kurds, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) who is also representing the Iraqi Kurds.
The PKK was created in 1974 as a Marxist-Leninist insurgent group primarily composed of Turkish Kurds searching for an independence movement.
