Kurds in Turkey Kurds in Turkey Kurds in Turkey refers to people born in or residing in Turkey who are of Kurdish origin. The Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Turkey. According to various estimates, they compose between 15% and 20% of the population of Turkey. There are Kurds living in various provinces of Turkey, but they are primarily concentrated in the east and southeast of the country, within the region viewed by Kurds as Northern Kurdistan. Massacres, such as the Dersim ethnocide and the Zilan massacre, have periodically occurred against the Kurds since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in
Population exchange between Greece and Turkey before the influx of immigrants of the population exchange. As a result, it was quite difficult to settle refugees in Anatolia since many of these homes had been occupied by people displaced by war before the government could seize them. More than one million refugees who left Turkey for Greece after the war in 1922, through different mechanisms contributed to the unification of elites under authoritarian regimes in Turkey and Greece. In Turkey, the departure of the independent and strong economic elites, e.g. the Greek Orthodox populations, left the dominant state elites unchallenged. In fact, Caglar Keyder noted that "what