Kurds have been coming to London since the 1960s from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
As a minority population in all these countries, their culture has often been savagely repressed. There are cultural, linguistic and religious differences between Kurds from each of these places.
Many of the Kurds in London come from Turkey, so they have made their homes in locations with existing Turkish communities, such as Green Lanes in Haringey.
It is clear that Kurdistan, in the sense of a territorially defined, independent nation-state has never existed. But for most Kurds the territorial reality of Kurdistan remains central to their sense of ‘imagined’ national identity.David J. Griffiths ‘Somali and Kurdish Refugees in London: New identities in the diaspora’.
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Over 20 million Kurds live in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. The Kurds became a minority when the post-World War I boundaries of these states were fixed by treaties with ex-colonial powers.
Kurds call the area they inhabit ‘Kurdistan’, though it has never been recognised as a nation. Kurds are mostly Sunni Muslims, but they speak different dialects and have distinct customs depending on their region of origin.
The Kurdish minority has frequently suffered oppression, for example in Turkey speaking Kurdish was banned from the 1920s.
A few Iraqi Kurds arrived in Britain after the 1958 coup in Iraq when the nationalist Ba’ath party seized power.
Iranians seeking asylum in London from Shi’ite Muslim Ayatollah Khomeini’s revolution in 1979 included Kurds.
In 1988, thousands of Kurds were murdered with chemical weapons in the ‘Anfal’ military operations carried out under Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and some escaped to Britain when the Gulf War ended in 1991.
Kurds in Turkey are still not recognised as a separate culture and are discriminated against.
In the late 1980s Alevi Kurds began to come to Britain to escape persecution by Turkish Sunni fundamentalists.
Although Kurds in London may share political sympathies with other expatriates like the Turks, they are nevertheless determined to differentiate their culture from Turkish and other mainstream cultures.
British bureaucracy has often not distinguished Kurds from other refugees from Iran, Iraq and Turkey, so the exact number of Kurds in London is unknown.
It is estimated that there are 20-30,000 Kurds in Britain, two-thirds of whom are from Turkey. The majority are under 40 years of age, have families of five or more members, and have few qualifications.
Kurds have settled in areas like Stoke Newington in Hackney and Green Lanes in Haringey which had existing Turkish speaking communities. Here they have also found opportunities to work in the garment trade or in catering.
Some of the main Kurdish community organisations in London are affiliated with the PKK, a Kurdish separatist organisation founded in Turkey by Abdullah Ocalan in 1978.
The Med TV channel, which had its license revoked in Britain, continues to broadcast from Belgium, and provides a cultural forum for Kurds everywhere.
However, many Kurds have settled in London because it affords them civil rights and economic opportunities, and do not support any political organisation.
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