Kurds in Turkey
ethnic group
The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey. According to various estimates, they compose between 15% and 25% of the population of Turkey. There are Kurds living in various provinces of Turkey, but they are primarily concentrated in the east and southeast of the country within the region viewed by Kurds as Turkish Kurdistan.
During the violent suppressions of numerous Kurdish rebellions since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, such as the Sheikh Said Rebellion, the Ararat rebellion, and the Dersim Rebellion, massacres have periodically been committed against the Kurds, with one prominent incident being the Zilan Massacre. The Turkish government categorized Kurds as "Mountain Turks" until 1991, and denied the existence of Kurds. The words "Kurds" or "Kurdistan" were banned in any language by the Turkish government, though "Kurdish" was allowed in census reports. Following the military coup of 1980, the Kurdish languages were officially prohibited in public and private life. Many people who spoke, published, or sang in Kurdish were arrested and imprisoned. In Turkey, it is illegal to use Kurdish as a language of instruction in both public and private schools. The Kurdish language is only allowed as a subject in some schools.
“Kurds in Turkey” enters the record as ethnic group. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kurds, Turkey and ethnic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1117020. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1991 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kurds in Turkey” 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.