Iran's minority Kurds in focus again

Security Issues Ethnic conflicts

Context: Recently, nationwide protests erupted in Iran over the death of a Iranian Kurdish woman in the custody of Iran’s morality police.

The Kurds are one of the indigenous people of the Mesopotamian plains and the highlands, areas that today are contained within southeastern Turkey, northeastern Syria, northern Iraq, northwestern Iran and southwestern Armenia.
Estimated at between 25 million and 35 million people, the Kurds are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East.
They form a distinctive community, united through race, culture and language.
While most of them are Sunni Muslims, they also adhere to a number of different religions and creeds, including Christians, Jews, Yazidis and Zoroastrians.
They are considered the largest ethnic group in the world to be stateless.
Kurdish claims have oscillated between full-on separatism and autonomy within a multi-ethnic Iranian state, spanning a wide political spectrum from left-leaning secularism to right-wing Islamist thought.

1890s: Kurdish nationalism stirred when the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs.
1920: Treaty of Sevres imposed a settlement and colonial carve-up of Turkey after World War One, promised Kurds independence.
1923: Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk tore up Sevres accord.
1924: The Treaty of Lausanne, ratified in 1924, divided the Kurds among the new nations of the Middle East.
1946: Kurdish separatism in Iran first bubbled to the surface with the Republic of Mahabad, a Soviet-backed state stretching over Iran’s border with Turkey and Iraq.It lasted one year before the central government wrested back control.
1979: Iran’s Islamic Revolution touched off bloodshed in its Kurdistan region with heavy clashes between the Shi’ite revolutionaries and the Kurdish Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) which fought for independence.
After the 1980: Eruption of the Iran-Iraq war, regular Iranian armed forces and Revolutionary Guards doubled down on their repression of Kurds so as to prevent them becoming a fifth column in Tehran’s fight against Saddam Hussein.

New militant groups such as the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) have emerged over the past two decades and have occasionally clashed with security forces.
Their leaders have often sought refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan and have been attacked by Iranian missiles.