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Kurds in the United States may refer to people born in or residing in the United States of Kurdish origin. The majority of Kurdish Americans are recent migrants from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria. Kurdish emigration to the United States began in twentieth century and has increased in recent years. There are few generalizations that can be made about American Kurds because of the group's diverse blend of language, religion, and national identity. Despite the cultural differences that exist within the Kurdish population, the marginalization and persecution of the Kurdish people has led to a revived Kurdish national identity. In recent years, the internet has played a large role in mobilizing the Kurdish movement, uniting diasporic communities of Kurds around the Middle East, European Union, Canada, the U.S.A., and Australia.〔Yeğen, Mesut. "Review: The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity." International Journal of Middle East Studies 40.3 (2008): 518-20. JSTOR. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.〕 Today, American Kurds are playing a pivotal role in reviving the emerging Kurdish national movement. ==Immigration history== Kurdish immigration in the United States began in the twentieth century. Kurdish immigration started after World War I, with several waves of migration to the United States from the area considered "Kurdistan". Following WWI, the Iraqi Revolution increased the emigration of Kurds to the United States (as well as Iran). After WWI the Kurds had been promised an autonomous region, "Kurdistan", in the Treaty of Sevres in 1920.The ideology of the time was heavily influenced by Woodrow Wilson's doctrine of peoples right to self determination and was why Kurds originally were granted the area of "Kurdistan".〔Ryan, David, and Patrick Kiely. America and Iraq: Policy-making, Intervention and Regional Politics. London: Routledge, 2009.〕 After the Turkish War of Independence, however, the treaty was annulled and replaced with the Treaty of Lausanne that denied any Kurdish claim to an autonomous region. After the reversal of Kurdish land claims and ensuing persecution, Kurdish emigration from the Middle East began. Many diaspora communities were established in Europe and other Kurds emigrated to the U.S.〔Baser, Dr Bahar. Diasporas and Homeland Conflicts: A Comparative Perspective. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2015. 〕 Following the wave of migrants that left in the aftermath of the World Wars, a second wave of Kurds in 1979 came from the Northern area of Iraq and Iran.〔 Many of the Kurds that emigrated at this time did so because they rejected the theocratic system that followed the Iranian Revolution. There were also large groups of Kurds that left because of the socio-political turmoil that was a byproduct of the revolution and general political instability. Many of the immigrants that made the journey in 1979 had endeavored to overthrow the Shah, or at least opposed him. Due to this opposition to the shah, many immigrants from Iran were granted asylum with little trouble, as well as receiving assisted travel to the United States.〔 Other byproducts of the revolution were innumerable border disputes between Iran and Iraq. These tensions culminated in the Iran-Iraq War that lasted from 1980-1988. The third distinguished wave of Kurdish migrants arrived between 1991 and 1992, and is considered to be the largest of the four waves.〔 This migration was due in part to Kurdish support for Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, because Saddam Hussein had retaliated by attacking multiple Kurdish regions with chemical weapons.The most horrific and infamous of these attacks occurred at Halabja in 1988. Although different groups of Kurds have alternate interpretations of the attack, Kurds in general regard the event as evidence of genocide against the Kurdish people and have used this claim for political gains.〔Watts, Nicole F. “The Role of Symbolic Capital in Protest: State-Society Relations and the Destruction of the Halabja Martyrs Monument in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 32, no. 1 (January 1, 2012): 70–85. doi:10.1215/1089201X-1545327.〕 Although there was widespread support for Iran from Iraqi Kurds, the Iran-Iraq War caused severe internal divisions within the Kurdish population.〔Yildiz, Kerim, and Tanyel B. Tayşi. "Iranian State Policy and the Kurds: Politics and Human Rights." The Kurds in Iran: The Past, Present and Future. London: Pluto, 2007. N. pag. Ebsco Host. Web.〕 Thousands of Kurds moved to the U.S. during this time.〔 The last major wave of Kurdish migration to the United States or at least to Nashville (which has the largest concentration of Kurdish communities in this country), was Between 1996 and 1997, following a major civil war between Iraqi Kurdistan's two major political parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The Iraqi army began targeting hundreds of individuals accused of working against Saddam's regime. The International Organization for Migration initiated an evacuation. Kurdish refugees crossed the Turkish border, after which they were evacuated to Guam – a U.S. territory in the Pacific – and later resettled in the U.S.〔UC Davis. "Kurds and Refugees - Migration News | Migration Dialogue." Migration News. University of California Davis, n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2015.〕 The collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003 led to a massive influx of Kurds and Turcomans returning to lands they were displaced from during the Ba'athist policies. Several groups of Kurds emigrated to the United States due to the instability caused by land disputes between returning Kurds and Turcomans and Arabs whose land they felt entitled to.〔 After 2008, several more groups of Kurds emigrated to the U.S.. Many of these migrants had worked in some capacity either with United States military or humanitarian efforts, international humanitarian organizations, and other NGO's. * * 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kurdish Americans」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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