Arabic is also widely used, sometimes as an abjad ( as with Urdu and Persian ) and sometimes as a complete alphabet ( as with Kurdish and Uyghur ).

:* Kurdish uses the symbols Ç, Ê, Î, Ş and Û with other 26 standard Latin alphabet symbols.

* 1999 – Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan is charged with treason in Ankara, Turkey.

* 1988 – Halabja poison gas attack: The Kurdish town of Halabjah in Iraq is attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents on the orders of Saddam Hussein, killing 5000 people and injuring about 10000 people.

According to Toufic Fahd, around the 9th century, Al-Dinawari, an Iranian Kurdish naturalist, wrote the Kitab al-Nabat ( Book of Plants ), in which he deals with the application of meteorology to agriculture during the Muslim Agricultural Revolution.

* 1920 – Azeri and Turkish army soldiers with participation of Kurdish gangs attacked the Armenian inhabitants of Shushi ( Nagorno Karabakh ).

If a language uses multiple writing systems, it may have distinct orthographies, as is the case with Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian, Inuktitut and Turkish.

* 1998 – While en route from Adana to Ankara, a Turkish Airlines flight with a crew of 6 and 33 passengers is hijacked by a Kurdish militant who orders the pilot to fly to Switzerland.

" From 1973-5, the CIA colluded with Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran to finance and arm Kurdish rebels in the Second Kurdish-Iraqi War in an attempt to overthrow al-Bakr.

Nearly from its founding as a modern state in 1920, Iraq has had to deal with Kurdish separatists in the northern part of the country.

Saddam did negotiate an agreement in 1970 with separatist Kurdish leaders, giving them autonomy, but the agreement broke down.

The result was brutal fighting between the government and Kurdish groups and even Iraqi bombing of Kurdish villages in Iran, which caused Iraqi relations with Iran to deteriorate.

During the war, Iraq used chemical weapons against Iranian forces fighting on the southern front and Kurdish separatists who were attempting to open up a northern front in Iraq with the help of Iran.

On 16 March 1988, the Kurdish town of Halabja was attacked with a mix of mustard gas and nerve agents, killing 5, 000 civilians, and maiming, disfiguring, or seriously debilitating 10, 000 more.

( see Halabja poison gas attack ) The attack occurred in conjunction with the 1988 al-Anfal campaign designed to reassert central control of the mostly Kurdish population of areas of northern Iraq and defeat the Kurdish peshmerga rebel forces.

Today, one can find Berbers of Tamazgha ( North Africa ), Māori of New Zealand, Hausa people of Northern Nigeria, Kurdish people in East-Turkey and Atayal of Taiwan with facial tattoos.

** Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Öcalan is charged with treason in Ankara, Turkey.

The Kurdish Muslim Saladin retook Hebron in 1187 – again with Jewish assistance according to one late tradition, in exchange for a letter of security allowing them to return to the city and build a synagogue there.

Windfuhr identified Kurdish dialects as Parthian, albeit with a Median substratum.

The state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation ( TRT ) started its 24-hour Kurdish television station on 1 January 2009 with the motto “ we live under the same sky .” The Turkish Prime Minister sent a video message in Kurdish to the opening ceremony, which was attended by Minister of Culture and other state officials.

The bomber, a Kurdish terrorist, died, while 15 police officers and 17 civilians were injured.

Arif threatened force against any Kurdish opponent of Mulla Mustafa, while Mulla Mustafa declared that any resistance to Baghdad would constitute a declaration of war against himself and the Barzanis.

The results of the tender, which was broadcast live on Iraqi television, are as follows for all major fields awarded but excluding the Kurdish controlled areas where Production Sharing Contracts have been awarded which are currently being disputed by the Baghdad government.

The Kurds, many of whom speak Kurdish, make up 9 % of the population and live mostly in the northeast corner of Syria, though sizable Kurdish communities live in most major Syrian cities as well.

The PUK has branches in all of the major cities and towns of Iraqi Kurdistan and draws membership from a broad cross-section of Kurdish society.

* Both major parties of Kurdistan, an autonomous region in Northern Iraq, vow to fight Turkish troops if they enter Kurdistan to capture Mosul or interfere in Kurdish self-rule.

In 2007 after major defeats by the KRG's Peshmerga's forces, Ansar al-Islam largely disbanded and splinter groups were formed, including al-Qaeda Kurdish Battalions.

Territorially, the elections of 2007 saw a major advance for the AK Party, with the party outpolling the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party in traditional Kurdish strongholds such as Van and Mardin, as well as outpolling the secular-left CHP in traditionally secular areas such as Antalya and Artvin.

It is a major market place with its goods and merchandise serving not only the Kurdish controlled area, but most of north and middle Iraq.

Arabic was a major source of vocabulary for languages as diverse as Berber, spoken Indonesian, Kurdish, Malay, Maltese, Persian, Portuguese, Sindhi, Punjabi, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Turkish, Urdu, as well as other languages in countries where these languages are spoken ; a process that reached its high point in the 10th to the 14th centuries, the high point of Arabic culture, and although many of these words have fallen out of use since then, many remain.

On 27 April, martial law was declared in 11 of 67 provinces, including major urban areas and Kurdish regions.

Following the First Gulf War, Iraqi Kurdistan fell into a state of civil war between the two major Kurdish parties the KDP and the PUK, and their Peshmerga forces were used to fight each other.

The battle is one of major historical importance because it not only negated the idea that the Murshid of the Shia-Qizilbash was infallible, but it also fully defined the Ottoman-Safavid borders and led Kurdish chiefs to assert their authority and switch their allegiance from the Safavids to the Ottomans.

In early January 2012, Krekar announced in an interview with a kurdish online newspaper Rudaw from the Kurdish Autonomous Region that he would be leaving Norway and returning to the Kurdistan region soon, saying " My return to the Kurdistan region has become a major political issue.

In Gilan there are three major Iranian language groups, namely Gilaki, Rudbari, and Taleshi, and pockets of two other groups, Tati and Kurdish.

Under Seljuk rule in the eleventh century, it was a major cultural and commercial centre in Western Iran and the southern Kurdish region as a whole.

* In Iran, it is sometimes called " Shikaki ", due to major Kurmanji tribe Shikak which is the tribe of legendary Kurdish leader Ismail Aghaye Shikak, also known as legendary Simko among the Kurds.

In the late 1990s, these extremist groups suffered major defeats by Kurdish forces.

Most recently, the Iraq War has displaced the regional Assyrian community, as its people have faced ethnic and religious persecution at the hands of Islamic extremists and Arab and Kurdish nationalists.

Two parties supported by the majority Shi ' a ( or Shiite ) Muslim community between them won a majority of seats, while parties representing the Kurdish community will also be strongly represented.

This is due to a rising demand for Arabic food due to its popularity and to cater for a larger Arab and Kurdish community than in the past.

* Kurdish exile community in Ankara, Konya, Kirsehir, Aksaray, Eskisehir and some other cities of Middle Anatolia of Turkey also speak Kurmanji.

Amedia has a well-integrated community of Assyrian Christians and mainly Kurdish Muslims that share the city and local social events.