The Kurdish Question Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

The Kurdish Question - Essay Example By some estimates, there are as many as 45 million Kurds that live within the region defined by Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. Due to the fact that this region is ultimately inhospitable, rocky, and mostly mountainous, it has ultimately served as a buffer zone and a hinterland for all of these nations and has not readily lent itself to being defined as a nation (Jimenez & Kabachnik, 2012). However, in order to understand the plight of the Kurds, it is necessary to review the situation from a historical perspective. As with so many disenfranchised and otherwise marginalized people groups, the Kurdish people have historically found themselves trapped between great powers and incorporated in a litany of different empires. The reader can and should understand the unique geographical realities that the Kurdish people have had to deal with in terms of understanding the fact that these people occupied the highlands that separated the Mediterranean and the Caucuses from the riche s of Mesopotamia. Though the history of the Kurdish people predates even the earliest records, as a means of impressing the reader/researcher with the realities of the current situation, this analysis will begin considering the history of the Kurdish people during the time of the Persian Empire. The way in which Kurds and Kurdish land were absorbed into the Persian Empire would ultimately become the model by which future regional and world powers would integrate with an understanding of the Kurds (Ackerman, 2006). Yet another interesting geographic dynamic that helps to define this group is with regards to the fact that all of the nations that have been listed, Kurds comprise high percentages of minority groups within each nation (A.P. & Chu, 1996). With the exception of Iran, Kurds comprise the second largest minority in each of the prior countries that it been listed. Similarly, one of the main reasons that a Kurdish homeland is not currently being considered is due to the fact that one of the most oil-rich areas within the entire Middle East has been determined to be directly under the regions of northern Iraq, South Eastern Syria, and southwestern Iran; an area in which the Kurds would like to make their homeland. Such a reality of course precludes any hope that these nations will relinquish control and allow the Kurdish people to have a higher