Title: Kurdish Voices in Diaspora: An Overview on Kurdish Diasporic Literature
Author: Ozlem Galip
Release date: 2014.

The lack of a sovereign entity undoubtedly distinguishes the Kurdish diaspora from other state-bound diasporas, and Kurds are certainly to be included in the ‘stateless diasporas’ category. The stateless and divided Kurdish ‘territorial minority’ forms a diaspora (extra-territorial minority) consisting of immigrants and refugees from four ‘countries of origin’ [Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey], spread throughout many nation states (Emanuelsson 2005: 20). Nor can the major role played in Kurdish history by forced migration be ignored. In recent years large numbers of people have fled from Kurdistan, and Kurds now make up a broad range of diasporic communities (1) dispersed around the world (2). This is one reason why estimates of the number of Kurds outside Kurdistan are imprecise. In 1992, van Bruinessen estimated that a quarter to a third of all Kurds were living outside Kurdistan, and that only a minority of them were likely ever to return (1992b: 66).

Refugees from Turkey constitute the majority of Kurds in Europe, at a rate of approximately 80 to 85 per cent (Wahlbeck 2001: 73–99); substantial numbers are to be found in Europe and the US, and there are also indigenous Kurdish populations in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkmenistan (Nezan 1993) (3). Kurdish diaspora numbers include refugees, migrants, and second and third-generation members of the diasporic communities, and the figures keep changing. Since the displacement early in the twentieth century, the extent of migration has increased further. In 1980, Kurds fled from the military takeover in Turkey, and later from the armed conflict and continuous human rights violations that followed (Emanuelsson 2005: 84). During the 1990s the number of Kurdish refugees from other states increased drastically because of escalating suppression and conflict between these states and the Kurds (van Bruinessen 2000: 10–12, Wahlbeck 2001: 74). As a result, there has been some very important research carried out on Kurdish diaspora issues, including that by Wahlbeck (1999), Emanuelsson (2005), Alinia (2004) and Østergaard-Nielsen (2006), as well as chapters or articles by Faist (1999), van Bruinessen (2000), and Hassanpour (2003b). Each work discusses the Kurdish diaspora from a different perspective.[1]