page_title: Kurdish population
section_title: European Union
hierarchical_section_title: Kurdish population / Diaspora / European Union
caption_attribution_description: English: Kurdish demonstration at Schuman, Brussels, 25 October 2017
context_page_description: Most Kurdish people live in Kurdistan, which today is split between Iranian Kurdistan, Iraqi Kurdistan, Turkish Kurdistan, and Syrian Kurdistan.
  A special case are the Kurdish populations in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, displaced there mostly in the time of the Russian Empire, who underwent independent developments for more than a century and have developed an ethnic identity in their own right. This group's population was estimated at close to 0.4 million in 1990.
context_section_description: The Kurdish diaspora in the European Union is most significant in Germany, France, Sweden, Belgium and the Netherlands. Kurds from Turkey went to Germany and France during the 1960s as immigrant workers. Thousands of Kurdish refugees and political refugees fled from Turkey to Sweden during the 1970s and onward, and from Iraq during the 1980s and 1990s.
  In France, the Iranian Kurds make up the majority of the community.  However, thousands of Iraqi Kurds also arrived in the mid 1990s. More recently, Syrian Kurds have been entering France illegally
  In the United Kingdom, Kurds first began to immigrate between 1974-75 when the rebellion of Iraqi Kurds against the Iraqi government was repressed. The Iraqi government began to destroy Kurdish villages and forced many Kurds to move to barren land in the south. These events resulted in many Kurds fleeing to the United Kingdom. Thus, the Iraqi Kurds make up a large part of the community. In 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in Iran and installed Islamic law. There was widespread political oppression and persecution of the Kurdish community. Since the late 1970s the number of people from Iran seeking asylum in Britain has remained high. In 1988, Saddam Hussein launched the Anfal campaign in the northern Iraq. This included mass executions and disappearances of the Kurdish community. The use of chemical weapons against thousands of towns and villages in the region, as well as the town of Halabja increased the number of Iraq Kurds entering the United Kingdom. A large number of Kurds also came to the United Kingdom following the 1980 military coup in Turkey. More recently, immigration has been due to the continued political oppression and the repression of ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq and Iran. Estimates of the Kurdish population in the United Kingdom are as high as 200-250,000.
  In Denmark, there is a significant number of Iraqi political refugees, many of which are Kurds.
  In Finland, most Kurds arrived in the 1990s as Iraqi refugees. Kurds in Finland have no great attachment to the Iraqi state because of their position as a persecuted minority. Thus, they feel more accepted and comfortable in Finland, many wanting to get rid of their Iraqi citizenship.
  From 1994 to 1999, 43,759 Kurds entered Greece illegally and of the 9,797 who applied for asylum 524 were granted it.
caption: Demonstration in support of the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan at Schuman, Brussels, 25 October 2017
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