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The Kurds are one of the biggest ethnic groups in the world without their own nation. Numbering between 30 and 40 million worldwide, most live amid the peaks and valleys straddling the borders of Armenia, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

The Kurds link their history to that of the Medes, an ancient Middle Eastern people. They were left stateless a century ago when the borders of the modern Middle East emerged from the collapsing Ottoman Empire. Repeatedly caught in the bloody political competition of a volatile region and often forced to rely on their homegrown militia, the peshmerga, for defence, the Kurds say their tough and often bloody history has taught them that they have “no friends but the mountains”.

Despite significant diversity, the Kurds have their own distinct culture, with a language related to Persian that has many dialects, music, cuisine and identity. Their nationalism has its roots in the late 19th century but dreams of a homeland have been repeatedly dashed, and promises made across a century or more by imperial powers such as Britain and then the US to support their national ambitions have gone unfulfilled. Most are Sunni Muslim but there are significant religious minorities.

Since the second world war, a series of authoritarian regimes, rulers and governments in the region have brutally repressed Kurds, displacing and killing entire communities. Outside powers have sought to exploit the Kurds to gain leverage, sowing dissension and rivalry. Such interventions frequently brought disastrous results for Kurdish communities.

In Turkey, a long conflict between security forces and the PKK, a leftist group that first fought for an independent Kurdish state and then autonomy, has killed more than 40,000 people and displaced many more in the country’s southeast.

In Iraq, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Kurds in the north, though after the Gulf War of 1991, they were able to carve out a semi-autonomous zone which they have governed ever since.

In Syria, efforts during the last decade’s civil strife to build another enclave ultimately failed, despite the Kurds’ key role as ground fighters in the successful campaign waged by the US-led coalition to defeat Islamic State there and also in Iraq.

That effort, which cost many Kurdish lives, consolidated the reputation of the peshmerga – the name means those who seek death – as effective fighters whose knowledge of terrain, mobility and motivation compensate for their light weaponry even against tough enemies. It also built connections with US officials and military personnel, and refined tactics that could be deployed in coming weeks if, as reported, the Trump administration seeks to use fighters from Iranian Kurdish opposition groups to undermine current rulers in Tehran.

With air support and US military advisers on the ground, the peshmerga could cross the border and hold territory in Kurdish-dominated areas in Iran but any idea that they could advance much further than the border zone is unrealistic, analysts say.

Iran’s Kurdish regions have a historic record of resistance to central authority that goes back to the revolution of 1979. More recently they were a major flashpoint during a large wave of domestic unrest in 2022, when nationwide protests were triggered by the death in custody of an Iranian-Kurdish woman, and again following anti-government protests that began in late December 2025 and led to thousands of people being killed in January 2026.