Possible map of Kurdish areas.

This is a map showing Kurdish areas, produced by Kurds themselves. Non-Kurds may dispute it. It shows how difficult it would be to create a sovereign political body or state that included all Kurds. It should be noted that not all speakers of Kurdish languages can understand each other - that is there are a cluster of Kurdish dialects.

 The Ottoman Empire was multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic. It included in the far west Slavs, Albanians and Greeks; in the east it included Arabs, Turks, Armenians, Kurds and other Caucasian people. Some of these minorities were Christian: the Slavs and Greeks in the west; the Armenians in the east.

By the end of the 19th century the Ottomans were being affected by the rise of nationalism in Europe. In the west their Balkan empire was lost to the emerging Greeks, Bulgarians, Serbs, Romanians and Albanians. In the east their empire remained but increasingly under threat from the British and Russians and from the Arab nationalism growing in the Middle East.

During the first world war, when the Ottomans were allies of the Germans, the British threatened them from Egypt and the Arabian Gulf, undermining their Arab territories in Palestine, Mesopotamia and in the Arabian peninsula. The Government in Constantinople (Istanbul) increasingly worried that the Christian Armenians would ally with the British and Russians and undermine the war effort.

The Armenians were driven out from their traditional lands and massacred by the Ottoman government.

The Kurds are a people without a state, in dispute with and often at war with all the states in which they find themselves.

Armenians and Kurds both speak Indo-European languages, though not otherwise closely related. Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims, whereas Armenians have been Christian since very early in Christian history.

At present Kurds are divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. In Turkey they are oppressed by the government often trying to pretend they are not really there. In Iraq they have achieved an autonomous province which often seems on the brink of declaring independence. In Syria the civil war as the Baath regime collapses may be about to let the Kurdish are become autonomous. Will it join with Iraqi Kurdistan?

What is the future of the Kurds in Iran? Only if a stronger Kurdistan to the west arises are they likely to achieve autonomy or independence.

Armenians are now confined to Armenia, a former Soviet Republic, and to their diaspora in Lebanon and the United States and elsewhere.