The DNA of the Kurds

Authored by historian, writer, and researcher Fred Aprim.

September 6, 2024

The people known today as Kurds are a mix of many different cultural and linguistic tribes that originated from central Asia. These tribes moved west and settled in western Iran’s Zagros Mountains. It is not known when these tribes acquired the term Kurd, but we know that the term originated from KWRT, a Persian that means “tent-dweller”. Prof. Asatrian, an expert of Kurdish history, writes the national doctrine of the Kurdish identity-makers has centered around the idea of a unified image of one homogeneous ethnic, cultural, or linguistic identity. The chimerical idea of this imagined unity has become further the fundament of Kurdish identity-making, resulting in the creation of fantastic ethnic and cultural prehistory, perversion of historical facts, falsification of linguistic data, etc.¹

The Kurds’ DNA suggests the followings:

47% of modern Kurdish ancestry derive from Yaz culture that originated in modern day Turkmenistan. The Yaz culture has even mixture with the culture of Margiana (non-Indo Europeans), Bactria and Sogdia in modern day Uzbekistan. The other half of Yaz culture descended from Andronova Steppe Nomads who originated from modern day Kazakhstan.

¹ Garnik Asatrian. “Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds”, Iran and the Caucasus Vol 13, No. 1. Yerevan State University. Brill, 2009, page 10

38% of modern Kurds descend from modern day Iranian farmers that Kurds picked up while on their migration from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. In Iran, the Kurds picked up more Iranian admixture as they continued their movement west to where they live today.

13% of modern Kurdish ancestry is a Levantine (Syria region). The presence of Kurds in Syria region is complex. The first comes from post Islam, but is kind of misleading. In the 7th Century, when Islam reached the Kurds in the Zagros Mountains in west Iran, some Muslim Kurds were Arabized just as many other ethnic groups in southern Mesopotamia were as well. These Arabized Kurds joined the Islamic army, which in time marched west into the Levant and established that presence there. However, the recent Kurdish (and not Islamic) presence in Syria is from post WWI. In 1925, the Kurds under Shaikh Sa’eed (Sa’id) revolted against the Turks in southeast Turkiye*. The Turkish Army captured their leader, but thousands of Kurds fled south into the Mandated Syria where they were welcomed by the French mandate authorities. Here the Kurds began to harass the local population, steal their lands, oppress them, kidnap their women or simply intermarry with the Muslim population.

2% of the modern Kurdish ancestry is Mongolian.

All this was added to admixture to Turks, Turkomans and other tribes and groups who assimilated in the modern Kurdish ethnicity.²

When Sultan Selim I gave the Kurds the permission to settle in eastern Ottoman Empire after the alliance of the Sunni Ottomans and Sunni Kurds defeated the Shia Safavid Persians in the 1514 Battle of Chaldiran, the Kurds began to attack many of the indigenous peoples around Anatolia forcing many of them to become Kurds. Kurdish nationalists and historians do not shy from making the statements that many of the tribes, linguistic, cultural and even ethnic groups are Kurds. We know, for example, that the Assyrian people were in majority in Urfa region (southeast Turkiye) even at the beginning of 13th century.³

Prof. Asatrian writes that the problem with the Kurdish history is that many ethnic groups living as enclaves, or in the vicinity of the Kurds, are traditionally considered part of the Kurdish conglomeration, such as:
the Zazas or Dimilis, a people numbering around 4-5 million – in Turkey,
the Gurans, Awromans, Lurs, Bakhtiaris, and Laks, total around 5-6 million – in Iran,
the Assyrians (Assyro-Chaldaeans),
Yezidis, and even Armenians in Iraq and Syria.
Here we witness a curious phenomenon: it seems almost all ethnic groups of the region except Persians and Turkic-speaking elements that turned out to be by God’s will the neighbors of the Kurds, are tacitly incorporated into the bulk of the Kurdish mass and, therefore, regarded as Kurd. If such an approach is somehow justified for the Kurdish organizations pursuing political objectives, then for academic scholarship and Western research centers (in the U.S., European countries, Russia), there is no ground for relying on deliberately inflated data.⁴

Kurdish nationalists and historians such as Soran Hamarash, Fadhil Miran, Diayako Xarib, Mehrdad Izady and others have been relentless to rewrite a Kurdish history that is absolutely contrary to the historical facts.

² https://www.tiktok.com/@dna.uncovered/video/7358232145074244910?_r=1&_t=8qVC0TtGKUy

³ Prof. Dr. Osman Turan, Dogu Anadolu Türk Devletleri Tarihi (The History of the Eastern Anatolian Turkish States), Istanbul 1973, p..232

⁴ Prof. Garnik Asatrian. “Prolegomena to the Study of the Kurds”, Iran and the Caucasus Vol 13, No. 1. Yerevan State University. Brill, 2009, page 5

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Biography of the Author

Frederick A. Aprim (Fred Aprim), an author, poet, and historian, was inspired by the great Assyrian nationalists, Dr. David Perley, Naoum Faik, Yusif Malek, and others.  Frederick Aprim Minashe was born in the city of Kirkuk (the ancient Assyrian city of Arrapha), northern Iraq, today (Occupied Assyria) on January 12, 1953, to Assyrian parents. In 1972, Fred attended Mosul University, College of Engineering, and graduated with a B. Sc. Degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1977. In 1981, Fred immigrated with his parents and sisters to U.S.A. Fred began writing his articles about Assyrian history and what it meant to say that someone was ‘Chaldean and Sur-yan’ (religious denominations). He posted hundreds of messages on various websites and forums in an attempt to educate his fellow Assyrians. Fred’s basic message is that the Assyrian people of Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran are ethnically and nationally Assyrians, but were known through their religious denominations, i.e. ‘‘Chaldeans and Sur-yan‘’.  This was due to a couple of reasons:  religion, which played and is still playing a pivotal role in our lives, and ignorance, inflicted upon the Assyrian people because of hundreds of years of cultural, religious, and ethnic oppression by the republics currently occupying the indigenous Assyrian homelands in the Middle East. 
Fred’s Books: He has many books about the Assyrians and the genocides and persecutions they were subjected to.His book “Assyrians: The Continuous Saga”.  This book is an important reference book for Assyrians and researchers, focusing on the continued existence of the Assyrians.