Title: The Kurdish Struggle 1920 - 1994
Author: Edgar O’ballance
Place of publication: London
Publisher: Macmillan Press
Release date: 1996
$The Kurds: Approximate Numbers and Locations$
Country / Total Population / Kurds
Turkey / 59 200 000 / 12-14 000 000
Iran / 58 900 000 / 6 500 000
Iraq / 18 400 000 / 3 500 000
Syria / 13 800 000 / 800 000
Armenia / 3 400 000 / 300 000
Lebanon / 2 700 000 / 60 000
Germany / 79 700 000 / 330 000
Elsewhere in the diaspora / 20 000
Total / 23 530 000
Sources: IISS, Kurdish Life, Kurdish Times, The Middle East.
Note that these figures represent a consensus of assessments and claims. Accuracy cannot be guaranteed, but in the absence of anything more reliable they form a rough guide.
Kurds are Muslims, some 85 per cent being of the mainstream Sunni sect, the remainder being Shia or other minority sects, such as Yezedi.
In the UN there are 135 nations whose people number less than the Kurds (Kurdish Life). [1]