Syrian Kurdistan

Syrian Kurdistan, also called Western Kurdistan or Rojava (from Kurdish: Rojavayê Kurdistanê, lit. 'Kurdistan where the sun sets'), is a region in northern Syria where Kurds form the majority. It geographically surrounds three noncontiguous enclaves along the Turkish and Iraqi borders: Afrin in the northwest, Kobani in the north, and Jazira in the northeast. The term started to become more widely known as Kurdish nationalist groups and parties started to use it in 2013 to describe the political entity later known as "Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria". However, this usage was officially dropped in 2016 in favor of a more inclusive name to the heterogenous area under PYD control.

Kurdish nationalists consider Syrian Kurdistan as one of the four Lesser Kurdistans that comprise Greater Kurdistan, alongside Iranian Kurdistan, Turkish Kurdistan, and Iraqi Kurdistan. A significant part of the Kurdish community of Afrin was displaced during the Turkish-backed Operation Olive Branch in 2018.

Etymology

According to the International Crisis Group and Kurdish studies expert Robert Lowe, the term "Rojava" gained common usage among Syrian Kurdish parties in 2013 to refer to the PYD-controlled areas of Syria. As for the term "Western Kurdistan", the Kurdish author Mehrdad R. Izady in 1992 mentioned the term in the context of "western Kurdistan in Turkey and Syria".

History

Origins, Middle Ages, and Ottoman Syria (1516–1920)

Kurds, widely considered to be the largest stateless ethnic group, are an Iranic ethnic group inhabiting a mountainous region known as Kurdistan that spans parts of several sovereign states in West Asia, primarily southeastern Turkey, parts of northern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran. Although Kurdish origins and migration remain the subject of scholarly investigation and controversy, and several different groups throughout history have lived in Kurdistan, Kurds are traditionally considered to have descended from Indo-European tribes migrating westward toward Iran in the middle of the second millennium BCE. In antiquity, Kurdistan was ruled, in turn, by the Assyrian, Median, Greek, Roman, and Persian empires.