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Article: Tourism Picking Up in Kurdish Southeast.(Turkey)
- Article from:
- The World and I
- Article date:
- September 1, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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About 20 percent of Turkey's 68 million people are Kurds, and about 52 percent of all Kurds live in Turkey, most of them in the southeastern part of the country.
The Kurds call their area Kurdistan, which they see as mainly including parts of Turkey, Iraq, and Iran, plus small areas of Syria, Lebanon, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. They claim to be the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East.
A decade of Kurdish insurrection against the Turkish government ended following the capture, trial, and sentencing of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999. The leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party asked his followers to refrain from any hostile actions that might ...