The Kurdish people, estimated at over 40 million, constitute one of the largest stateless nations in the world, primarily inhabiting a contiguous region known as Kurdistan, which spans southeastern Turkey, northern Syria, northern Iraq, and western Iran. The geopolitical reality of the Kurds has been profoundly shaped by the arbitrary borders drawn during the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the subsequent Treaty of Sèvres (1920), which promised but failed to deliver Kurdish autonomy.