page_title: Kurdish nationalism
section_title: Iraq
hierarchical_section_title: Kurdish nationalism / Iraq
caption_attribution_description: English: Iraqi Kurdistan 1996
context_page_description: Kurdish nationalism is a nationalist political movement which asserts that Kurds are a nation and espouses the creation of a state in Kurdistan, in opposition to the various nationalisms of the states that it is part of.
  Early Kurdish nationalism had its roots in the Ottoman Empire, within which Kurds were a significant ethnic group. With the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire, its Kurdish-majority territories were divided between the newly formed states of Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, making Kurds a significant ethnic minority in each state. Kurdish nationalist movements have long been suppressed by Turkey and the Arab-majority states of Iraq and Syria, all of whom fear a potential independent Kurdistan. Some Kurds in Iran are also nationalist, although nationalism is traditionally weaker there than in the other parts of Kurdistan.
  Since the 1970s, Iraqi Kurds have pursued the goal of greater autonomy and even outright independence against the Iraqi nationalist Ba'ath Party regimes, which responded with brutal repression, including the massacre of 182,000 Kurds in the Anfal genocide.
caption: KDP and PUK controlled areas of Kurdistan after the Iraqi Kurdish Civil War.
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