Kurds are a diverse ethnic group who number 30 to 40 million, and speak languages of the Indo-European family. A majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, but minorities follow Shi’ism, Alevism, Yarsanism, Yazidism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity. They are culturally distinct from Arabs, Turks, Persians, Syriacs and Armenians, their historical neighbours. The Kurds’ experience with modern mass violence, from civil wars to genocides, is long and complex. Whereas Kurds lived for centuries in pre-national conditions in the Ottoman and Persian empires, the advent of nationalism and the nation-state system in the Middle East in the twentieth century radically changed their situation.