KURDISH CULTURAL CENTER OF ILLINOIS
Community Organization
EXPERIENCE KURDISH CULTURAL CENTER OF ILLINOIS
Hope Is Where the Heart Is
KURDISH CULTURAL CENTER OF ILLINOIS AT A GLANCE
Kurdish Cultural Center of Illinois is a 501(c)3 non-for-profit organization dedicated to the bringing of people of interest in Kurdish Culture together, and building relationships within American communities across the States regardless of their background.Here at Kurdish Cultural Center of Illinois, we are driven by a single goal; to do our part in making the world a better place for all.
Kurdish Cultural Center of Illinois is achieving more with our initiatives than ever before. We work on many exciting projects to help improve the lives of others, and are very proud of the progress we continue to make.
WHO WE ARE
The Kurds are one of the indigenous people of the Mesopotamian plains and the highlands in what are now south-eastern Turkey, north-eastern Syria, northern Iraq, north-western Iran and south-western Armenia, make up the fourth-largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but have never obtained a permanent nation state.
LANGUAGE
Kurdish belongs to the north-western group of Irano-Aryan languages. Depending on location, Kurdish has been written in a variety of scripts.
POPULATION
The Kurdish people, the largest stateless nation in the world, live in Kurdistan which has been occupied by Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria since 16th century, with a population of an estimated 40 million.
DEMANDS
An independent democratic country and recognition of the existence of the Kurdish people.
The implementation of a vast programme of economic development in the Kurdish region.
In the early 20th Century, many Kurds began to consider the creation of a homeland - generally referred to as "Kurdistan". After World War One and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the victorious Western allies made provision for a Kurdish state in the 1920 Treaty of Sevres.
Such hopes were dashed three years later, however, when the Treaty of Lausanne, which set the boundaries of modern Turkey, made no provision for a Kurdish state and left Kurds with minority status in their respective countries. Over the next 80 years, any move by Kurds to set up an independent state was brutally quashed.