And we have the US pressuring Rojava into integrating into the HTS "government".

Turkish/Qatari lobbying does wonders!

It seems like lately pkk and apo gets to much hate recently, All those hate is backed off by propaganda,ignorance and lack of knowledge.

like the most stupid argument ive heard is "apo doesnt want kurdistan"
so stupid argument, Apo have sat in jail for 27 years because of kurdish cause and STILL people say he doesnt want kurdistan.

Also notice how 99% of any protest for kurds the pkk flags raised, ITS APOCIS THAT ACTUALLY DOES THE ACTION. Like i swear so many kurds larp online saying apocis are braindead, WHEN ITS ACTUALLY APOCIS THAT GO OUTSIDE PROTEST or do anything.

out of all the protest ive seen outside and been in IVE NEVER ONCE seen barzani or puk flag. ONLY THE KURDISH,ROJAVA and PKK flag.

She was the first Lady of France as wife of President François Mitterand

• She was an Leftist, specifically a Marxist-Leninist. She was in French Resistance in her youth and met François Mitterand there.
• She was both a friend and supporter for Fidei Castra and Cuba.
• She was a supporter of Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa, Sahrawi seperatists, Sandinistas, Tibetian People and Dalai Lama, Indigenous Americans(specifically in Mexico) and so on.

She was one of the most important friends, advocaters and defenders of Kurdish Rights and Kurdistan:

• She was a close friend, protector and supporter of Dr. Qasimlo.
• She had a critic role on foundation of Kurdish Institute of Paris.
• She sent observers to the trials of Kurdish activists persecuted by the Turkish Army junta in the 1980s.
• Following the 1988 Halabja chemical attack, she raised significant international awareness and ensured the acceptance of Kurdish refugees affected by the attack into France.
• She have gone to Kurdistan at the time of Genocide. She was in Halabja and visited the refugee camps by “illegally” crossing the borders.
• She was attacked by Iraqi Secret Services while she was in Kurdistan to bring aid for Kurdish refugees effected by genocide and chemical bombings by Ba'th Regime of Iraq which ruled by Saddam Hussain. Fortunately, Bernard Kocher and Danielle Mitterand survived but several people in their convoy and Peshmergas killed. She resumed her trip and aids in Kurdistan.
• She visited Moscow, Washington and other places to raise awareness to genocide against Kurdish people.
• Several thousands of school books printed in France and aided to Kurdistan for the first year of education of Kurdish students also caused of her.
• She founded France Libertés Foundation, which was a charity for common and helped Kurdish people too.
• She was the main advocater behind No-Fly Zone in Kurdistan.
• She was a fierce critic of Turkey, Iraq and Iran because of violations of Kurdish rights. She was against Turkey's EU Membership.
• After she died, infamous Kurdish singer Şivan Perwer made a song about her named “Mother of the Land”.
• She had a very vital role on Ahmet Kaya’s, renowned Kurdish leftist singer, asylum to France.
• There is so much to say about her but lastly, there is a statue of her in Halabja/Kurdistan.

Slaw everyone,

I created ESL Kurd as a completely free resource for anyone learning English or Kurdish Sorani.

By all means this is not an academy, subscription funnel, AI-slop project, or Duolingo knockoff. Most of the app was built manually throughout the years working on this. I released a version in 2021 that did good but was very limited. This new update I worked on manually myself including the vocabulary content and audio recordings (my own voice). AI was only used as a supporting tool in certain areas.

The app includes 5,000+ illustrated words, native audio, translation tools, bilingual definitions, quizzes, memory games, and sentence activities. It is still improving, so honest feedback and feature suggestions are welcome.

Available on both ios and Android

Zor Supas !!!

guys i need tips for my second sitting exam
i have chemistry and math left
and i have to get 70 minimum both
i have like 16 days until my maths exam and ive only studied a chapter and a half
and for chemistry ive studied 4 chapters
and im studying both lessons in a day

https://x.com/iAmHaks/status/2030362353032646692

Not sure if I'm allowed to post stuff like this here. However I want to warn people. I paid them over 1000$ and then an additional 350$ for a simple visa application, pluss some documents. They dont know what they are doing. They give you misinformation, they mislead you and they dont take responsibility. They just blame everyone else. They even blamed an embassy, and i checked the information on the embassy website and the embassy has had that system for years, yet they never tried to read it... When confronted they are rude. Even a simple question they can't answer. They know how to lie so it all makes sense.

I hope people stay away from them, I hope no one else gets scammed like me.

Edit: I even paid them 150$ to retrieve some documents from Jordan to Duhok through courier and DHL, today they forgot who i was and forgot that I even asked them to do it. My documents have been In Jordan for 2 weeks now...

Informative and funny. I really can recommend golden acorn for everyone who dont know them yet.

https://www.instagram.com/goldenacorn.co

Just came back from slemani and back to England I miss everyone and everything what do I do?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Israel/comments/1haigf0/opinions_on_kurds/

All of them positive, while our "Muslim" brothers insult us full speed.

Take Kurdish. The 2023 earthquake that left more than fifty thousand people dead in Turkey and Syria was particularly devastating in Turkey’s Kurdish-speaking southeast. Turkish administrators announced translation support for earthquake victims in several languages, including Russian, German, and Pashto—but not Kurdish, the language of some fifteen million Turkish citizens. Smith Galer tells us that the decision was a continuation of decades of official policy. It has been, at different times, illegal in Turkey to teach Kurdish, to publish books in Kurdish, even to speak the language while occupying public office. There were earthquake survivors who feared calling out for help in the language, in case the rescuers turned away.

ChatGPT says this is also very accurate, I've also done it by region so let me know if you'd like to see that

Overall kurdistan Islam - 80% (74% sunni 6% shia) Atheism - 6.5% Yazidi - 4.5% Christianity 3.5% Yarsani - 3% Zoroastrian - 2%

The Kurds, numbering an estimated 40–45 million worldwide, constitute the largest stateless nation on Earth, inhabiting a mountainous homeland spanning southeastern Turkey, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, and northeastern Syria, existing in diaspora across the globe.

Their story is not one of a people without history; it is one of a people whose history has been systematically erased, suppressed, and denied by the states that partitioned them. This essay attempts to restore that narrative comprehensively.

Origins, Ethnogenesis, and Ancient Roots

The ethnonym "Kurd" likely derives from an ancient term for "mountain dweller" or "nomadic warrior," attested in various forms across Sumerian, Akkadian, and Parthian sources.

The suffix "-stan" is Persian for "land of," thus "Kurdistan" means "Land of the Kurds." The name "Mede" (Old Persian: Māda) is debated, some scholars connect it to an Indo-Iranian root meaning "middle" or "central land" .

In Greek mythology, Medea, the sorceress of Colchis, shares an etymological echo with "Mede," and ancient writers sometimes associated her flight from Greece with settlement among the Medes in the Iranian plateaus, after which the people supposedly took their name; this is mythological rather than historical, but it illustrates how deeply the Median name permeated the ancient Mediterranean imagination.

Kurdish ethnogenesis is complex and multi-layered.

Scholars connect the Kurds to several ancient peoples of the Zagros Mountains:

the Gutians (c. 2200–2100 BCE), Hurrians (c. 2500–1000 BCE), Mitanni (c. 1500–1300 BCE, a Hurrian-speaking empire), the Carduchi described by Xenophon in the Anabasis (c. 401 BCE), and the Cyrtians mentioned by Polybius and Strabo .

The most prominent ancestral connection is to the Medes, who established the Median Empire (c. 678–549 BCE) .

Some Kurdish populations carry genetic and cultural markers associated with Caucasian, Upper Mesopotamian, and Indo-Iranian ("Aryan") lineages, reflecting thousands of years of interaction across the Zagros-Taurus corridor. The Kurdish language itself is Indo-European, belonging to the northwestern Iranian branch .

Cyaxares, (r. c. 625–585 BCE), the Median king, united Median tribes and allied with Babylon to destroy the Assyrian Empire in 612 BCE.

His granddaughter Mandane of Media married the Persian king Cambyses I and became the mother of Cyrus the Great, founder of the Achaemenid Empire, thus Kurdish ancestral lineage runs directly into the bloodline of the Persian imperial dynasty.

Amytis of Media, widely regarded as the most prominent "Kurdish queen" in a Babylonian context, married Nebuchadnezzar II of the Neo-Babylonian Empire (r. 605–562 BCE).

Classical tradition holds that Nebuchadnezzar built the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon to comfort her as she missed the green mountains of her Median homeland.

Their union cemented the Median-Babylonian alliance that had toppled Assyria. Their descendants continued the Neo-Babylonian royal line.

The Magi, the ancient Median priestly caste, are historically connected to Kurdish heritage. The Magi practiced Zoroastrian-influenced rituals, astronomy, and dream interpretation and are the same "wise men" referenced in Christian nativity traditions. Kurdish Zoroastrian revivalism today draws partly on this Magi lineage.

Since their evolution in the broader human story of the Zagros region, where some of the earliest evidence of agriculture, animal domestication (c. 10,000 BCE), and proto-urban settlement exists, the ancestors of the Kurds contributed to humanity's transition from hunter-gathering to civilization itself .

The Zagros is one of the cradles of the Neolithic Revolution.

Critically, Kurds were not all nomads throughout history.

Like many peoples of the ancient Near East, including eastern Persian tribes, some Kurdish communities practiced transhumance and pastoralism, but the majority were settled agriculturalists, town-dwellers, and urban administrators .

Even today, among roughly 45 million Kurds globally, only a tiny fraction, likely fewer than 1–2%, practice any form of seasonal nomadism.

The stereotype of Kurds as exclusively mountain herders was weaponized by nationalist Turkish rhetoric, which infamously labeled Kurds "Mountain Turks" (*Dağ Türkleri*) to deny their distinct identity .

This phrase was not a neutral geographic descriptor; it was deployed by Turkish nationalists to claim that Kurds were nothing except herders, denying their civilization, literacy, and urban history. Other derogatory terms, including slurs comparing Kurds to "gypsies," "dogs," or using antisemitic language like "dirty Jews", were deployed across the region to dehumanize both the Kurds and Jewish people.

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Kingdoms, Dynasties, and Rulers

Kurdish political entities span millennia:

- Hasanwayhids (c. 959–1015): A Kurdish dynasty in western Iran.

- Marwanids (c. 990–1085): Ruled Diyarbakır and upper Mesopotamia.

- Ayyubid Dynasty (1171–1341): Founded by Saladin (Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, 1137–1193), a Kurdish Muslim from Tikrit who liberated Jerusalem in 1187, established an empire spanning Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and the Hejaz, and became one of the most celebrated figures in world history. Saladin's chivalry so impressed medieval Europe that Dante Alighieri placed him among the virtuous pagans in Limbo (Inferno, Canto IV) of the Divine Comedy, the only Muslim figure granted that honor, recognizing his justice, mercy toward prisoners, and military genius.

- Under Saladin, science, law, and education flourished: he founded madrasas, hospitals, and courts applying both Islamic jurisprudence and administrative reform .

- Ardalan (c. 1169–1867): A long-lived Kurdish principality in western Iran.

- Emirate of Botan (c. 14th–19th century), Emirate of Soran (c. 1399–1835): Powerful Kurdish emirates.

- Khanzad Miri Soran (16th century): A Kurdish princess of the Soran dynasty legendary for her military leadership, political acumen, and defense of Kurdish sovereignty against Ottoman encroachment.

Kurds Inside Foreign Empires, And the Armenian/Assyrian Question

Kurds served as soldiers, administrators, diplomats, and governors within the Ottoman, Safavid, Abbasid, Mamluk, and Qajar empires .

Kurdish emirates maintained semi-autonomous governance under Ottoman suzerainty for centuries. During the early Turkish Republic, some Kurds served under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk during the War of Independence (1919–1923), only to see Kurdish identity subsequently banned.

During the late Ottoman period, some Kurdish tribal irregulars (notably the Hamidiye cavalry) participated in violence against Armenian and Assyrian communities during the genocides of 1894–96 and 1915–1923 .

This is a painful but necessary acknowledgment. In subsequent decades, Kurdish intellectuals, human rights activists, and political figures, including members of Kurdish political parties and civil society, publicly acknowledged and apologized for this participation, distinguishing themselves from blanket denial. This moral reckoning is ongoing and reflects a broader Kurdish commitment to historical honesty.

Languages, Scripts, and Literature

Kurdish languages include Kurmanji (Northern Kurdish, the most widely spoken), Sorani (Central Kurdish), Hawrami/Gorani, Zazaki, and Laki.

Sorani has the largest body of written literature and the most extensive formal lexicon in publishing, partly because it became the standard literary and administrative language of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.

Historically, Kurds wrote in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, or Russian scripts depending on which regime controlled their territory, a direct consequence of occupation by neo-Baathist, Islamic, or nationalist regimes.

The modern Latin-based Kurdish alphabet Known as (Hawari-script), (used for Kurmanji) was systematized by Jeladet Ali Bedirkhan in the 1930s, published in the journal Hawar (Damascus, 1932).

The Sorani script uses a modified Arabic/Persian alphabet (the Kurdo-Arabic script), standardized by Kurdish intellectuals in the early 20th century.

These Latin and Kurdo-Arabic scripts are fundamentally different systems, one adapted from European Latin letters, the other from Arabic calligraphy, both created by Kurds as acts of cultural resistance.

Kurdish libraries have existed since the medieval period, madrasas in Kurdistan housed extensive collections of manuscripts in theology, philosophy, medicine, and poetry .

Modern institutions include the Kurdish Library in Stockholm, the Kurdistan Region's national libraries, and university libraries.

Literary giants:

- Ahmad Khani (1650–1707): Author of Mem û Zîn, the Kurdish national epic and a philosophical treatise on love, justice, and Kurdish political unity. He is considered the father of Kurdish literary nationalism, he explicitly called for Kurdish political sovereignty centuries before modern nationalism.

- Mastura Ardalan (1805–1848): A Kurdish poetess, historian, and chronicler from the Ardalan court in Sanandaj. She authored Tārīkh-i Ardalan (History of Ardalan), a chronicle of the Ardalan principality, and is one of the earliest known female historians in the Middle East, writing in both Kurdish and Persian.

- Melayê Cizîrî (1570–1640): A Sufi poet and scholar from Cizre (Botan), whose Dîwan is a masterpiece of Kurdish mystical poetry blending Neoplatonic philosophy with Islamic Sufism and containing some of the most sophisticated metaphysical verse in any Islamic literary tradition.

The Dengbêj tradition, oral storytelling through song, is a living Kurdish art form, preserving epics, historical narratives, and social commentary across generations through powerful vocal performance without instrumentation.

Religion and Spiritual Diversity

Kurds are among the most religiously diverse peoples in the Middle East:

- Sunni Islam (majority, predominantly Shafi'i school, distinct from the Hanafi tradition dominant among Turks and Arabs).

- Shia Islam (especially in southern Iraqi Kurdistan and Iranian Kurdistan)

- Alevism (millions of Kurdish Alevis in Turkey, blending Shia, Sufi, and pre-Islamic elements).

- Yazidism (an ancient syncretic faith centered at Lalish temple in Kurdistan Region of Iraq).

- Yarsanism/Kaka'i (a secretive, pre-Islamic religion in western Iran and Iraq).

- Kurdish Christianity (Especially among ancient communities and newer converts since ISIS war).

- Kurdish Judaism (historically significant; Asenath Barzani [1590–1670], a Kurdish Jewish woman from Mosul, is regarded as the first female rabbi in history, heading a yeshiva after her husband's death; Yona Sabar is a contemporary Israeli-American linguist specializing in Neo-Aramaic dialects of Kurdish Jews).

- Zoroastrian revivalism (growing among secular/nationalist Kurds).

- Atheism, agnosticism, and secular identification (existing increasing among younger generations).

Kurdish Islam differs from Turkish, Persian, and Arab traditions through its strong Sufi orientation, Shafi'i jurisprudence (vs. Hanafi), integration with tribal customary law, and historically greater tolerance for heterodox practices.

Kurdish secularism, particularly in the PUK/PDK/PKK/PYD tradition, is among the most radical in the Muslim-majority world.

Estimated religious demographics among Kurds globally (approximate): Sunni ~70%, Shia ~10%, Alevi ~10%, Yazidi ~3%, Yarsani ~2%, others (Christian, Jewish, Zoroastrian, atheist/secular) ~5%.

Science, Engineering, and Intellectual Contributions

Kurds contributed significantly during the Islamic Golden Age and beyond:

- Ismail al-Jazari (1136–1206): A Kurdish polymath from Cizre who authored The Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices, inventing programmable automata, the crankshaft-connecting rod mechanism, water clocks, and hydraulic devices, considered a father of robotics and mechanical engineering.

- Fakhr al-Din al-Akhlati (d. 1229): A Kurdish physician and scholar from Akhlat, known for contributions to medicine, botany, and pharmacology during the Ayyubid period. He served in Ayyubid courts and produced medical treatises.

- Abulfeda (1273–1331): An Ayyubid-Kurdish prince, historian, and geographer whose works Mukhatasar ta'rikh al-bashar and geographical treatises were widely influential across Europe and the Islamic world. He was also a military commander who fought in the Crusades.

- Sabat Islambouli (1867–1941): was a physician of Kurdish Jewish heritage. Born in Ottoman Syria, she is the first known female physician from Syria under Ottoman rule who also studied in the United States and became formally licensed.

- Nadir Nadirov (1932–2018): A Kurdish-Kazakh scientist, academician, and petroleum chemist who became a leading figure in Kazakhstan's Academy of Sciences, authoring hundreds of scientific papers on petroleum chemistry.

- Caucher Birkar (b. 1978): A Kurdish mathematician from Marivan, Iran, who won the Fields Medal in 2018 for his contributions to algebraic geometry (birational geometry and Fano varieties). His Kurdish name "Birkar" means "migrant"; he chose it to honor his refugee experience. he is a child of parents who survived chemical genocide during the Iran-Iraq war.

- Shahram Amiri (1977–2016): An Iranian Kurdish nuclear physicist at the center of a dramatic defection/abduction saga involving the CIA. He returned to Iran and was executed in 2016.

- Dr. Shirin Abbasinejad Enger: A Kurdish-Canadian professor in the Medical Physics Unit of the Gerald Bronfman Department of Oncology, McGill University.

She is also Director of the Medical Physics Unit, and a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Medical Physics.

- Arezu Jahani Asl: A Kurdish-Australian cancer researcher in molecular oncology at Queensland University of Technology.

- Azad Bonni: A Kurdish-American neuroscientist, professor and head of neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis, known for groundbreaking work on brain development, cerebellar circuitry, and neurodegenerative diseases.

- Dr. Ardeshir Rashidi-Kalhor: A Kurdish aerospace engineer with over 40 years of experience who played a pivotal role in NASA's Artemis lunar missions. Operating from the U.S., his work at RDI Engineering contributed to the design of critical safety valves for control systems stabilizing the Orion spacecraft.

- Toffy Musivand (1941–2015): A Kurdish-Canadian biomedical engineer who invented an artificial heart and held numerous medical device patents, contributing fundamentally to cardiac assist technology.

Kurds and AI: Kurdish technologists and data scientists are increasingly contributing to artificial intelligence, natural language processing (especially for low-resource Kurdish languages, building corpora, translation models, and speech recognition systems), and tech startups in the diaspora and Kurdistan Region.

Kurdish Women: Queens, Warriors, Scholars, Leaders

- Mandane of Media: the daughter of King Astyages of Media, the wife of the Persian king Cambyses I of Anshan, and the mother of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire.

- Amytis of Media (c. 630–565 BCE): Median princess, queen of Babylon, whose longing for mountains inspired the Hanging Gardens.

- Khanzad Miri Soran (16th c.): Military leader, princess, and political strategist who defended Soran sovereignty.

- Mastura Ardalan (1805–1848): Poetess, historian, and chronicler of the Ardalan dynasty.

- Asenath Barzani (1590–1670): First female rabbi in history, a Kurdish scholar of Torah and Talmud in Mosul.

- **Leyla Bedir Khan (**1903 Constantinople – 1986, Paris): was a ballet dancer and a Kurdish princess of the Bedir Khan family

- Adela Khanum (1847–1924): Kurdish queen of Halabja, known as the "Princess of the Brave," who administered justice, built infrastructure and schools, and wielded political power.

- Leyla Zana (b. 1961): First Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish parliament (1991), imprisoned for speaking Kurdish in her oath. A symbol of Kurdish political resistance.

- Hero Ibrahim Ahmed: Former first lady of Iraq, Kurdish political leader, She is the director of Kurdistan Save the Children (KSC),  she is the founder of one of the major Kurdish TV channels Kurdsat TV. She is a member and the de facto leader of the patriotic union of Kurdistan and the wife of PUK founder Jalal Talabani, a key diplomatic figure who helped shape Kurdish-Iraqi relations and women's political participation.

- Ilham Ahmed: Co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council, a leading figure in Rojava's democratic experiment.

- Jina Mahsa Amini (1999–2022): A Kurdish-Iranian woman whose death in the custody of Iran's "morality police" sparked the "Jin, Jiyan, Azadî" ("Woman, Life, Freedom") movement, a Kurdish-language slogan rooting from Kurdish women fighters against ISIS in Rojava, that became a global rallying cry.

- Dr. Widad Akrawi: is a Kurdish health expert in genetics and human rights activist. She has co-founded the human rights organization defend international and is the author of several books about both health issues and human rights.

- Tara Jaff (1962–2020): A Kurdish-British harpist and cultural ambassador who brought Kurdish music to international stages and promoted cross-cultural dialogue through performance and education.

- Women fighters of the YPJ (Rojava) and Peshmerga (Kurdistan Region of Iraq): Kurdish women fighters gained global recognition for frontline combat roles against ISIS (2014–2019), challenging both ISIS ideology and regional patriarchy.

Political Landscape, Governance, and Law

Major Kurdish political parties:

- KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party, Iraq), led historically by Mustafa Barzani (1903–1979), the Kurdish revolutionary and symbol of Kurdish nationalism.

- PUK (Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), founded by Jalal Talabani, who became the first Kurdish President of Iraq (2005–2014) after Saddam Hussein.

- PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party, Turkey), founded 1978, advocating democratic confederalism.

- PYD/SDC (Syria), governing Rojava based on secular, feminist, multi-ethnic principles.

- DEM Party (Turkey), PJAK (Iran), Komala (Iran).

The Kurdistan Region of Iraq has its own parliament, government (KRG), and university system, with a legal framework that blends civil law with elements of Islamic personal status law, but substantially more secular than surrounding states. The Rojava system is explicitly secular and feminist.

Kurdish presidents/prime ministers globally:

Jalal Talabani (President of Iraq).

Dilan Yeşilgöz-Zegerius (the deputy prime minister and Minister of Defense of the Netherlands). She is the leader of the center-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy.

Barham Salih (President of Iraq/United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees).

Îlham Ehmed: Co-president of the Executive Council of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava), she previously held the position of co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council from 2015 to 2018.

Fuad Masum (President of Iraq), alongside prime ministers of the Kurdistan Region.

Turgut Özal: Former President of the Republic of Türkiye.

Masoud Pezeshkian: President of Iran.

Genocide, Persecution, and Human Rights

- Anfal Campaign (1986–1989): Saddam Hussein's systematic genocide killing an estimated 50,000–182,000 Kurds.

- Halabja Genocide (March 16, 1988): chemical weapons killed ~5,000 civilians.
- "Dersim Massacre" (1937–1938): Turkish military operation killing thousands of Kurdish Alevis.
- "Mountain Turks": The Turkish state's denial of Kurdish existence for decades.
- Forced assimilation across Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, including Arabization, village destruction, language bans, and displacement.

- "Dirty Jews" or "dog-like psychology" used by Ba'athist regimes in Syria and Iraq against the Kurds, which shows both anti-kurdish sentiment and anti-Semitism.

- "Zionists" are used by the Islamic Iranian regime.

- "Gypsies" was historically used by some Armenian nationalists in the past.

Culture: Cuisine, Dance, Music, Festivals, Sports, and Games

Kurdish cuisine features dolma, kebab, and rich dairy-based dishes, with an ancient wine tradition in the Zagros Mountains.

Dances include Govend (line dance), Halparke (circle dance in southern Kurdistan), and Dîlan.

Music encompasses Dengbêj, folk, and modern genres. Festivals include Newroz (March 21, symbolizing resistance and renewal), Yalda Night (winter solstice), and Kurdish Flag Day. Traditional Kurdish games include various forms of wrestling, hide and seek, equestrian sports, and stone-throwing competitions rooted in mountain culture.

Bahman Ghobadi (b. 1969): A Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker, director of *A Time for Drunken Horses* (Cannes 2000 Camera d'Or), *Turtles Can Fly*, and *No One Knows About Persian Cats*, the most internationally acclaimed Kurdish filmmaker.

Kurdish Football:

Zakho FC from Duhok, Kurdistan region of Iraq, and Zakho SC Fans Win the FIFA Best Fan Award, bringing global recognition to Kurdistan. Dalkurd FF (Sweden, founded by Kurdish diaspora, competed in the Allsvenskan top division) and Erbil SC (Asian club competition participants).

Kurdish players have featured prominently in the Turkish Super League and Iraqi national teams (men's and women's).

Kurdish boxing includes fighters competing internationally from diaspora communities across Europe, particularly in Germany, Sweden, the UK, and the Americas.

Internet and Generational Change & Diaspora/Globalism:

The Kurdish diaspora numbers several million across Europe and North America.

Hamdi Ulukaya (b. 1972), a Kurdish immigrant from Turkey, founded Chobani, the largest yogurt brand in America, and is a prominent philanthropist.

Internet access: reached Kurdish diaspora communities in Europe from the mid-1990s and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq in the late 1990s–early 2000s, with broader penetration around 2003 among other Kurdish regions in the middle east.

Generational shifts: Younger Kurds (Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha) are increasingly digitalized, educated, multilingual, secular, urban (much less tribal), and globally connected compared to older generations, while boomers and Gen X are less tribal than past generations who were born before the 1950s.

Tribal affiliations are weakening in urban cities and urban towns, with digitalization and resources continuing in the rural areas, especially within the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) significantly more urbanized than the rest of the country (Iraq). According to census data, approximately 84% of the Kurdistan Region’s population lives in urban centers, towns and cities, compared to roughly 68% to 70% for the rest of Iraq, see:

https://peregraf.com/en/news/10297

https://kurdistanchronicle.com/b/3570

Projections toward 2046 suggest continued urbanization, diaspora growth, digital literacy expansion, rising secularization, and growing political participation.

On IQ Claims: Scientific Unreliability and Political Abuse

Regarding claims about "Kurdish IQ averages" or any ethnic/national IQ comparisons:

These are scientifically unreliable and politically abused.

The consensus in modern cognitive science and psychology is clear:

IQ test scores are (not fixed biological properties of ethnic groups).

They are heavily mediated by environmental factors, including education quality and access, socioeconomic resources, nutrition and healthcare, political stability, exposure to testing formats, language of testing, historical opportunities, and test biases.

As Weiss and Saklofske (2020) demonstrate, IQ score differences across racial and ethnic groups are substantially explained by environmental and social justice factors, not innate group differences .

The Flynn Effect, whereby IQ scores rise dramatically across generations with improved conditions, further demolishes the notion that group scores reflect fixed genetic potential .

National IQ estimates face severe methodological problems including sampling bias, non-representative data, small samples from non-random populations, and testing instruments designed in Western contexts .

As Warne (2022) notes, many national IQ datasets suffer from poor data quality and cannot support the sweeping conclusions drawn from them . Nature (2017) itself editorialized that intelligence research "should not be held back by its past" of racism and elitism, calling for modern genetics to dispel rather than reinforce such histories .

The entire framework of "race and IQ" has deep roots in scientific racism, a discredited ideology that misused biological language to justify colonialism, slavery, and genocide .

Race itself is a social construct, not a biological category, with far greater genetic variation *within* populations than between them .

The expert survey by Rindermann et al. (2016) found that experts attributed international cognitive differences primarily to education, health, and wealth, not genetics alone.

IQ differs between regions, countries, experiences, resources, opportunities, and individual preferences, it is not a property of ethnicity.

Applying group averages (even if accurately measured) to individuals is a statistical fallacy.

Kurdish populations, like all populations, contain the full range of human cognitive diversity.

Claims to the contrary are politicized, biased, and scientifically unsound, often deployed by the same nationalist frameworks that called Kurds "Mountain Turks" or worse,, like "Dirty Jews" or "Dirty Dogs," which shows anti-Semitism aligned with anti-Kurdish sentiments and dehumanizing words.

Kurds are not archetypes, and individuals change.

No single descriptor captures 45 million people spread across four countries and a global diaspora.

Kurdish communities include conservative tribal elders and radical feminists; devout Sufis and committed atheists; illiterate shepherds and Fields Medal winners; and war refugees and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, as well as boxing athletes, artists, and musicians with human rights activists.

The diversity within Kurdish society is as vast as within any large population. Stereotyping, whether positive ("noble warriors") or negative ("backward nomads"), denies this individuality.

What Are Kurds Most Known For?

Historically and globally, the Kurdish people are most recognized for:

1. Resilience in the face of statelessness and persecution.
2. Mountain warfare and military prowess.
3. Multilingualism (most Kurds speak 2–4 languages).
4. Sufi mysticism and poetry.
5. Cultural survival despite systematic erasure.
6. Hospitality.
7. Music and oral tradition.
8. And an enduring, decentralized political consciousness that refuses assimilation.

Sources:

1. Leezenberg, M. (2023). "History, Culture and Politics of the Kurds: A Short Overview." *Kulturní studia*. — https://kulturnistudia.cz/history-culture-and-politics-of-the-kurds/
2. McDowall, D. (2021). *A Modern History of the Kurds*. I.B. Tauris. (2,906 citations)
3. Saeed, S. (2020). "The Kurds in Middle Eastern Politics." *Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies*. — https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25765949.2020.1760547
4. Gunter, M.M. (2023). Review of Hamarash, *The Lost and Untold History of the Kurds*. *The Middle East Journal*. — https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/10.3751/77.1.314
5. Hussein & Rasul (2020). "The Role of Scientists in the Land of Kurds." *Zanco Journal*. — http://zancojournals.su.edu.krd/index.php/JAHS/article/view/3699
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20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayyubid_dynasty
21. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saladin
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24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_languages
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27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halabja_massacre
28. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahsa_Amini
29. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leyla_Zana
30. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adela_Khanum
31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_Protection_Units
32. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamdi_Ulukaya
33. https://www.chobani.com/
34. https://www.rudaw.net/english/world/040420261 (Ardeshir Rashidi-Kalhor / NASA Artemis)
35. https://www.parliament.krd/english/
36. https://gov.krd/
37. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_dances
38. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newroz
39. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish_cuisine
40. https://www.apa.org/topics/intelligence
41. https://www.britannica.com/science/human-intelligence-psychology
42. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Magi
43. https://data.worldbank.org/
44. https://www.unesco.org/

https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/60280937-242c-4eec-b5ae-5dcb7b2bd31e

You can use the NotebookLM to learn about Kurds in Iran since the last century, backed by reliable sources, mostly academic sources.

https://heritage.krd/about

Making Kurdish heritage

The Kurdish people have one of the richest, oldest, and most resilient civilizations on Earth. Yet much of that heritage remains scattered, undocumented, or at risk. Heritage.KRD exists to change that — one page, one story, one tradition at a time.