Kurdish population
ethnic group
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.
Kurdistan
The bulk of Kurdish groups in Kurdistan are Sunni (mostly of the Shafi'i school), but there are significant minorities adhering to Shia Islam (especially Alevis), Yazidism, Yarsanism, Christianity and Judaism.
Turkey
According to a report by Turkish agency KONDA, in 2006, out of the total population of 73 million people in Turkey there were 11.4 million Kurds and Zazas living in Turkey (close to 15.68% of the total population). The Turkish newspaper Milliyet reported in 2008 that the Kurdish population in Turkey is 12.6 million; although this also includes 3 million Zazas. According to the World Factbook, Kurdish people make up 18% of Turkey's population (about 14 million, out of 77.8 million people). Kurdish sources put the figure at 10 to 15 million Kurds in Turkey.
Kurds mostly live in Northern Kurdistan, in Southeastern and Eastern Anatolia. But large Kurdish populations can be found in western Turkey due to internal migration. According to Rüstem Erkan, Istanbul is the province with the largest Kurdish population in Turkey.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kurdish population” as ethnic group. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as ethnic group. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3673783. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2006 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kurdish population” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.