Kurdish population

[5] The bulk of Kurdish groups in Kurdistan are Sunni (mostly of the Shafi'i school), but there are significant minorities adhering to Shia Islam (especially Alevis), Yazidism, Yarsanism, Christianity and Judaism.

But large Kurdish populations can be found in western Turkey due to internal migration.

According to Rüstem Erkan, Istanbul is the province with the largest Kurdish population in Turkey.

[20][better source needed] Kurds led by Mustafa Barzani were engaged in heavy fighting against successive Iraqi regimes from 1960 to 1975.

[21] However, at the same time, the Iraqi regime started an Arabization program in the oil-rich regions of Kirkuk and Khanaqin.

[24] Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Syria and make up nine percent of the country's population.

[26][27] Syrian Kurdistan is an unofficial name used by some to describe the Kurdish inhabited regions of northern and northeastern Syria.

[28] The northeastern Kurdish inhabited region covers the greater part of Hasakah Governorate.

Another region with significant Kurdish population is Kobanê (Ayn al-Arab) in the northern part of Syria near the town of Jarabulus and also the city of Afrin and its surroundings along the Turkish border.

[37] According to a United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees report from 1998, about 80% of the Kurdish population in Georgia are assimilated Kurds.

Over the next few centuries, several other Kurdish families were sent to Lebanon by a number of powers to maintain rule in those regions, others moved as a result of poverty and violence in Kurdistan.

These Kurdish groups settled in and ruled many areas of Lebanon for a long period of time.

[44] The Kurdish diaspora in the European Union is most significant in Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The Iraqi government began to destroy Kurdish villages and forced many Kurds to move to barren land in the south.

Since the late 1970s the number of people from Iran seeking asylum in Britain has remained high.

[48] More recently, immigration has been due to the continued political oppression and the repression of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Iran.

There are also Kurds in Southern California, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Dallas, Texas.

[60] Since the second half of the 1980s, the majority of Kurds arriving in Australia have been from Iraq and Iran; many of them were accepted under the Humanitarian Programme.