These original dispatches, correspondence and reports record aspects of the Kurdish situation, starting from the period following the First World War. Although the Kurdish peoples are numerous, their aspirations for unity and independence have been repressed by the dominant regimes in the region, effectively minoritising the Kurds within a group of established states. Since the end of the First World War, the former Ottoman Kurdistan has been administered by five sovereign states: Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the former Soviet Union. In 1918, Kurdish hopes for an independent Kurdistan provided for by the Treaty of Sevres (1920) were quashed by the constitution of modern Turkey, founded by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), and by the division of Kurdistan between Turkey, Syria and Iraq by the French and British, formalised in the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923.
