Mountainous region of Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Syria, inhabited predominantly by Kurds.
It covers about 74,000 sq mi (191,660 sq km), and its chief towns are Diyarbakır, Bitlis, and Van in Turkey, Mosul and Karkūk in Iraq, and Kermānshāh in Iran. Since early times the region has been the home of the Kurds , a people whose ethnic origins are uncertain. The Treaty of Sèvres , signed in 1920, provided for the recognition of a Kurdish state, but the agreement was never ratified.