Saladin Ayyubi Was Kurd ?

Saladin was a chivalrous Kurd who led with zeal and piety, earning the respect of his enemies. After sacking Jerusalem from the Crusaders during the third Crusades, he spared the inhabitants of the city

He was from Kurdistan e azad basha alami sagbab

It is strange how he is a symbol of Arab nationalism today, even Saddam (ironically who hated Kurds) compared himself to Saladin, and Egypt have Saladin's eagle on their flag. Some people claim that he was really Turkish. I doubt Saladin cared, he was more a Muslim than anything else.

The Kurds received especially harsh treatment at the hands of the Turkish government, which tried to deprive them of Kurdish identity by designating them "Mountain Turks," outlawing their language and forbidding them to wear traditional Kurdish costumes in the cities. The government also encouraged the migration of Kurds to the cities to dilute the population in the uplands. Turkey continues its policy of not recognizing the Kurds as a minority group.

In Iraq, Kurds have faced similar repression. After the Kurds supported Iran in the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war, Saddam Hussein retaliated, razing villages and attacking peasants with chemical weapons. The Kurds rebelled again after the Persian Gulf War only to be crushed again by Iraqi troops. About 2 million fled to Iran; 5 million currently live in Iraq. The United States has tried to create a safe haven for the Kurds within Iraq by imposing a "no-fly" zone north of the 36th parallel.

Despite a common goal of independent statehood, the 20 million or so Kurds in the various countries are hardly unified. From 1994-98, two Iraqi Kurd factions – the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal Talabani – fought a bloody war for power over northern Iraq. In September 1998, the two sides agreed to a power-sharing arrangement.

Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK, currently waging a guerrilla insurgency in southeastern Turkey, has rejected the Iraqi Kurds' decision to seek local self-government within a federal Iraq. The PKK believes any independent Kurdish state should be a homeland for all Kurds.