ties have received official recognition" (Entessar 9).
The Kurds are an ancient people who trace their descent from the ancient Medes who ruled what is now Iran until 550 BC when they were conquered by the Persians. In the seventh century the Kurds, along with most of the region, were forcibly converted to Islam during the Arab conquests. After the sixteenth century the Kurds came "to the fore as important players in regional politics" during the struggles between the Persian Safavid dynasty and the Ottoman Turks (Entessar 3). Numerous small Kurdish principalities flourished and survived within the Ottoman Empire. After the empire's disintegration following World War I, "the Kurds intensified their struggle for self-determination" (Entessar 3). But, unlike the Christian Armenians who gained from the European peace settlement, the Islamic Kurds "lacked both a national approach and international support" and were incorporated into the new Turkish state (O'Ballance 12).
The victorious European powers accepted in theory the idea of separate Armenian and Kurdish states, if the people wished. But Mostafa Kemal Ataturk, the leader of the new nation, conceived of Turkey as a modern, secular, democratic, and, he claimed, multiethnic state. The presence of the Armenians, however, was presented as a threat to the new state and, "fearful of the appearance of an autonomous Armenian nation on Turkish soil," Kurdish forces "under Turkish officers drove the Christian forces from eastern Turkey" (O'Ballance 14). Within a short time the Kurds themselves became the principal focus of "the desire of the country's leadership to suppress all non-Turkish ethnic identities" (Entessar 81). The Kurds began to rebel in various areas and by the end of 1924 Kemal had "prohibited all Kurdish schools, organizations, publications and religious fraternities" and
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