The Kurds and Kurdistan: a Selective and Annotated Bibliography
Lokman I. Meho
Greenwood Press
Kurdistan, or the land of the Kurds, is a strategic area located in the geographic heart of the Middle East. Today it comprises important parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Azerbaijan. Since it was, and still is, denied independence, most scholars describe Kurdistan as the area in which Kurds constitute an ethnic majority. Kurdistan was first divided in 1514 between the Ottoman and Persian empires. Four centuries later, Britain and France further altered the political contours of Kurdistan by dividing the Ottoman Kurdistan into three main parts. Iranian Kurdistan stayed where it was. The area thus partitioned consisted of about 190,000 square miles divided as follows: Turkey (43 percent), Iran (31 percent), Iraq (18 percent), Syria (6 percent), and the former Soviet Union (2 percent).2
As in the case with most Middle Eastern stateless nations and ethnic groups, estimates of the total number of Kurds vary widely. The subsequent governments of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the former Soviet Union did not (and still do not) carry out any real official census for the Kurdish populations in their respective countries. Turkey and Azerbaijan have even denied, until ... | 
