The Kurds are an indigenous people to Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia who came to speak an Indo-European language. That ‘Kurds have no friends, but the mountains’ is a saying born of repeated promises made to Kurds regarding independence, autonomy and/or cultural rights.  These promises have been forgotten or ignored when the services and sacrifices of the Kurds are no longer required.

One of the first instances was when their ancestral homeland was carved up and annexed by the victors of WW I. It was these victors and their collaborators who determined the borders of the new nation states of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and the Soviet Union. Today there are an estimated 50 million Kurds living in these countries and the diaspora.