Kurdish population
| Total population | |
|---|---|
|
c. 30–32 million See Statistics by country |
|
| Languages | |
|
Kurdish and Zazaki–Gorani In their different forms: Sorani, Kurmanji, Pehlewani, Zazaki, Gorani |
|
| Religion | |
| Mostly Sunni Muslim, but also Shia Muslim and Sufism with minorities of deism, agnosticism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Judaism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
c. 30–32 million
The Kurdish people live in the historical Kurdistan region, which today is split between Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria. The estimated population is 35 million.
A rough estimate by the CIA Factbook has Kurdish populations of 14.5 million in Turkey, 6 million in Iran, about 5 to 6 million in Iraq, and less than 2 million in Syria, which adds up to close to 28 million Kurds in Kurdistan and adjacent regions. Recent emigration has resulted in a Kurdish diaspora of about 1.5 million people, about half of them in Germany.
A special case are the Kurdish populations in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, displaced there mostly in the time of the Russian Empire, who underwent independent developments for more than a century and have developed an ethnic identity in their own right. This group's population was estimated at close to 0.4 million in 1990.
The Kurds are often dubbed "the largest ethnic group without a state", which statement (apart from the fact that more numerous stateless nations ostensibly do exist) has been rejected as misleading by Kurdologists, as it glosses over the significant cultural, social, religious, political and ideological heterogeneity between Kurdish groups. The bulk of Kurdish groups in Kurdistan are Sunni (mosty of the Shafi'i school), but there are significant minorities adhering to Shia Islam (especially Alevis), Yazidism, Yarsanism, Christianity and Judaism.
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Wikipedia