Some Kurds live in the republics of Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Their oldest habitat is in the south of Turkmenia along the Iranian border, many of them live also in Ashkhabad, in the town and region of Mary. In 1983 the number of Kurds in the Soviet Union was 130,000. Kurdish is an Indo-European language which belongs to the northwestern Iranian branch and is divided into several dialects. The Kurds of Caucasia and Central Asia speak the kurmandzh dialect, but the language of the Central-Asian Kurds, especially those of Turkmenia, is somewhat different.
Bilingualism is wide-spread.
Usually the second language is that of the host country but younger people, especially in towns, speak also Russian. The Caucasian Kurds have their own script. Anthropologically the Kurds belong to the Balkano-Caucasian Caspian type of the European race akin to the Azerbaijanis, Tats, Talysh etc. In the main, the Kurds are followers of Islam. The Armenian Kurds are Sunnites, the Central-Asian and Azerbaijani, Shiite.