Difference between Kurds and Turks.

Kurds and Turks have long lived in the neighborhood, and an outsider is unlikely to distinguish one from the other. Meanwhile, the only thing that unites these peoples is religion, and even then only partially. While the Turks are Sunni Muslims and the Ottoman Empire has been the main stronghold of Islam for several centuries, the Kurds hold different beliefs, although most of them are also Muslims. What is the difference between Kurds and Turks, apart from religion? Let's take a closer look.

Languages ​​

There is nothing in common between the Kurdish and Turkish languages. The Turkish language belongs to the Oguz subgroup of the Turkic languages, and its closest "relatives" are the Gagauz language, which is spoken by a small people living in Moldova and the Odessa region of Ukraine, and one of the dialects of the Crimean Tatar language. The Azerbaijani language moved a little further, in which there are many borrowings from Persian, although some linguists consider it a dialect of Turkish.

The difference between the Kurds and the Turks is that the Kurdish language belongs to the Iranian languages ​​that are part of the Indo-European family. Although the existence of a single Kurdish language is a subject of linguistic controversy. Most experts believe that it is correct to talk about the existence of a Kurdish language group, consisting of several languages:

  • Kurmanji;
  • Soran;
  • kelhuri.

Comparison

The Turks, having migrated to Asia Minor in historical time (late Middle Ages), defeated the Byzantine Empire and made Constantinople their capital, giving it another name - Istanbul. Later, the Ottoman Empire (at that time the Turks called themselves the Ottomans) grew, terrifying the European kingdoms. The Ottomans even besieged Vienna - the capital of the powerful Austrian Empire, however, they could not take it. The Ottoman Empire fought a lot with another empire - the Russian one, gradually retreating and surrendering the previously occupied territories. In 1918, after the defeat in the First World War, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the new borders of the country were delineated mainly according to the settlement of the Turkish people (with some exceptions).

The Kurds, unlike the Turks, never had their own statehood, always being part of foreign empires. After the First World War, when the territory of the Ottoman Empire and the Middle East were arbitrarily redrawn by the victorious European powers, there was again no place for a Kurdish state on the new political map of the world. As a result, the Kurds, more or less compactly living in the adjacent territories of three states - Turkey, Iraq and Syria, failed to become a single nation from the point of view of the international community. This was facilitated not only by political, but also by cultural disunity. The Kurds often had to defend their interests with arms in hand, so the glory of staunch and experienced warriors was firmly entrenched in the Middle East.

For the Turks, Sunni Islam became the cement that binds the people into a single political nation, but the Kurds are not so simple. Some of them, like the Turks, are Sunni Muslims, the other part living in the east of the national area are Shiites, and a third part are not Muslims at all. These Kurds adhere to Yezidism, a syncretic religion rooted not only in Islam, but also in Judaism, Christianity and even Zoroastrianism. On this, perhaps, we can end the conversation on the topic of what is the difference between Kurds and Turks. As you can see, the differences are much more than common.

Table

Kurds Turks
LanguageThere is no single language, it is more correct to speak of the Kurdish language group, which includes several languages: Kurmanji, Sorani, Kelhuri. The entire group belongs to the Iranian languages ​​of the Indo-European language familyA single language that is part of the Oghuz group of the Turkic language family
ReligionThey adhere to different madhhabs (directions in Islam) in Sunnism or Shiism. Some of the Kurds are YezidisMostly Sunni Muslims
Nuances of political historyNever had a national stateWere the founders of the powerful Ottoman empires, after the First World War, lost their hegemony
.