"It has been established that the PKK now has the perfect arrangement to produce, transport, and traffic in opiates and cannabis throughout Europe. Moreover, material evidence and intelligence sources have shown that the PKK is also engaging in laundering money from drug trafficking. The funds thus recovered are then funneled back into that terrorist organization."

United States Department of Justice
Drug Enforcement Administration
 

Confidential investigative report of June 23, 1995,
distributed to all DEA offices in Europe and Pakistan.

The Kurdish cultural area covers a mountainous region (Taurus and Zagros Mountains), divided among the following States:

Turkey: approximately 12 million Kurds (out of 58 million Turkish citizens);

Iran (northwestern): approximately 6 million (out of a total population of 56 million),

Iraq (northern): approximately 4 million (out of a total population of 18 million);

Syria (northern): approximately 800,000 Kurds (out of a total population of 13 million);

Former USSR (mostly in Armenia): approximately 500,000;

Lebanon: approximately 70,000 to 100, 000.

Of the above, between 600,000 and 700,000 are refugees or immigrants in Europe.

In other words, according to the sources, there are between 20 million and 24 million Kurds, which makes them the fourth largest ethnic group in the entire Middle East/Southwest Asia region, after the Arabs, Turks, and Persians. These Indo-Europeans are mostly Sunni Muslims, with Twelver Shiite, Alawite, Christian, and Yazidi minorities. Because they have split into a mosaic of tribes and clans, which, to this day, have been incapable of lasting unity and are often rent by fierce vendettas, the Kurds, whom even Genghis Khan and Hülagü were unable to subdue, have, over the course of their history, suffered mistreatment, to say the least, throughout the region. As a Kurdish intellectual has said: "for us, every valley is a different nation, another country." Today, for example, the Kurds of Turkey use the Roman alphabet, while those of Iran, and of Syria and Iraq, use the Persian and Arabic alphabets, respectively.

In Turkey alone, home to 47 ethnic or religious minorities, the "Kurdish" ethnic group includes tribes and clans of Kurds proper, who generally speak Turkish, and, often, Kermanji or Kurmandzhi. These tribes are generally Sunni Muslims, though some are Alawite (Alavi) or Yazidi, or even Christian (Assyrian [Nestorian] Church). But there are also the Zaza tribes, who are Sunni or Alavi, speak Zaza, unintelligible to Kermanji speakers, and whose Kurdish identity is questioned by a number of experts.