- Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq and Chairman of the Iraqi Revolutionary Command Council from 1979 until his overthrow by US forces in 2003. He was executed after being found guilty of war crimes at his trial in 2006. He was a member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism. Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power.
- Jalal Talabani
Jalal Talabani (born 1933), is an Iraqi politician, who was elected State President of Iraq on April 6, 2005, (sworn in the next day, April 7, and once again on April 22, 2006, by the Iraqi National Assembly. Talabani is the founder and secretary general of one of the main Iraqi Kurdish political parties, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). He was a prominent member of the Interim Iraq Governing Council, …
- Massoud Barzani
Massoud Barzani (born August 16, 1946) is the President of the Autonomous Kurdish Government in Iraq and leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. He succeeded his father as the leader of the KDP in 1979. In 1995, he requested help from the Iraqi government to capture the city of Erbil from the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) led by the current President of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, also a Kurd. Mr. Talabani obtained support from Iran in that struggle.
- Benazir Bhutto
She was elected co-chairwoman of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) along with her mother, and when free elections were finally held in 1988, she herself became Prime Minister. At 35, she was one of the youngest chief executives in the world, and the first woman to serve as prime minister in an Islamic country.
- Hoshyar Zebari
Hoshyar Zebari (born 1953) is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iraq. A Kurd originally from Aqrah, a city in Iraqi Kurdistan, Zebari holds a masters degree in sociology from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom and studied political science in Jordan. He was the foreign spokesperson for the Kurdistan Democratic Party in the 1990s and represented the party to both, the United Kingdom and the United States.
- Mahmoud Othman
Dr Mahmoud Ali Othman (b. 1938) was a member of the Interim Iraq Governing Council created following the United States's 2003 invasion of Iraq. A Kurd and Sunni Muslim, Othman was a member of the Political Bureau Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). He then founded the Kurdish Socialist Party. He was also the Chief Negotiator in the 1970 agreement with the Baath Party. He is now a leading member of the Iraqi National Assembly. Othman was born in Slemani.
- Bahman Ghobadi
Bahman Ghobadi is a Kurdish Iranian film director. He was born on February 1, 1969 in Baneh, Iran. Ghobadi belongs to the so called "new wave" of Iranian cinema.
- Abdullah Öcalan
Abdullah "Apo" Öcalan, is the founding leader of the Kurdish militant group Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
- Ali Hassan Al-Majid
Ali Hassan Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti (born 1941) is a former Ba'athist Iraqi Defense Minister and military commander. A first cousin of former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein, he became notorious in the 1980s and 1990s for his role in the Iraqi government's campaigns of deportations and mass killings against its Kurdish and Shi'ite populations. He was captured following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was charged with war crimes.
- Barham Salih
Barham Ahmad Salih (born 1960) is a Kurdish politician who serves as Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq. He was elected to the Iraqi National Assembly in December 2005 as part of the Kurdistani Alliance list. Salih also chairs a committee on oil and energy policy.
- Leyla Zana
Leyla Zana (born May 3, 1961), is a former female Turkish politician of Kurdish origin, who was imprisoned for speaking Kurdish in the Turkish Parliament after taking her parliamentary oath and for her political actions which were considered against the unity of Turkey. She was awarded the 1995 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament, but was unable to collect it until her release in 2004.
- Mustafa Barzani
Mustafa Barzani (March 14, 1903 – March 3, 1979) was a Kurdish nationalist leader and President of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Legendary to many of his people, Barzani was one of the most inspired, tenacious and resilient Kurdish leaders with a commitment to the struggle for Kurdish interests. He led armed struggles against both the governments of Iran and Iraq.
- Ciwan Haco
Ciwan Haco (born 1957) is a Kurdish singer. He was born near Qamishlo in Syria. His grandfather was originally from Mardin in Turkish Kurdistan. After finishing high school, he left for Germany in order to continue his studies. He studied music at the University of Bochum for three years. He is now residing in Norway.
- Ahmet Kaya
Ahmet Kaya (28 October, 1957, Malatya, Turkey - 16 November, 2000, Paris, France) was a Kurdish poet, singer, and a leading artist in Turkey.
- Şivan Perwer
Şivan Perwer (born on December 23 1955 in Sarıdam (Sorî), Siverek as İsmail Aygün) is a poet, a singer a performer on the "tembûr" (lute) and a leading Kurdish artist. He captivates audiences not only by his charismatic and controversial personality, but above all his powerful, highly emotional voice and the hypnotic rhythm of his music. For many years, his songs – even those about love – were banned in Iraq, …
- Ehmedê Xanî
- Nawshirwan Mustafa
Nawshirwan (Also Noshirwan) Mustafa is a prominent Kurdish politician and academic. He was the co-founder and until December 2006 the deputy secretary general and political bureau member for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), one of the two leading political parties in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraq in general.
- Osman Baydemir
Osman Baydemir is a Turkish politician, lawyer and human rights activist of Kurdish origin. He is the current mayor of his home town of Diyarbakır and member of the Democratic Society Party (DTP).
- Ferhat Tunc
Ferhat Tunc is a Kurdish musician.
- Michael Ware
Michael Ware is an Australian journalist reporting for CNN as an international correspondent based in Baghdad. He joined CNN in May 2006, after five years with sister-publication Time Magazine. He is one of the only mainstream reporters to have lived in Baghdad near-continuously since before the American invasion and he gained early acclaim as one of the few reporters to establish contacts with the Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi insurgency.
- Robert Baer
Robert "Bob" B. Baer (born July 1, 1952), is an author and former case officer at the Central Intelligence Agency.
- Feleknas Uca
Feleknas Uca (born September 17, 1976) is a member of the European Parliament for the left German Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). She was at one time the world's only Yazidi parliamentarian until the Iraqi legislature was elected in 2005. Feleknas Uca was born in Celle, Lower Saxony, Germany to a Kurdish family. She graduated from Comprehensive School in Celle before taking an apprenticeship as a doctor's assistant, …
- Mullah Krekar
Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, commonly known as Mullah Krekar, born July 7, 1956, is an Iraqi Kurd who came to Norway as a refugee from northern Iraq in 1991. His wife and four children have Norwegian citizenship, but not Krekar himself. He speaks Kurdish, Arabic, Norwegian and English. Krekar was the original leader of the Islamist armed group Ansar al-Islam, which was set up and commenced operations in Iraqi Kurdistan while he had refugee status in Norway.
- Walid Jumblatt
Walid Jumblatt is the current leader of the Progressive Socialist Party "PSP" of Lebanon and the most prominent leader of the Druze community. He is currently one of the most outspoken anti-Syrian politicians in Lebanon and is allied with the March 14 Alliance, which includes the Future Movement, the Lebanese Forces and the Qornet Chehwan Gathering.
- Martin van Bruinessen
Martin van Bruinessen is a Dutch anthropologist and author, who has published a number of publications on Kurdish, Indonesian, Turkish, Persian matters, and also on aspects of Islam as a whole. He was born in 1946 in Schoonhoven in the Netherlands. He taught the sociology of religion at the State Institute of Islamic Studies of Yogyakarta, Indonesia and has been teaching Kurdish and Turkish studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands since 1994.
- Mehmed Uzun
Mehmed Uzun, is a contemporary Kurdish writer and novelist. He was born in Siverek, Urfa in Turkey in 1953. Although Kurdish was outlawed in Turkey from 1920 to 1990, he started to write in his mother tongue. As a writer, he has achieved a great deal towards shaping a modern Kurdish literary language and reviving the Kurdish tradition of storytelling. From 1977 to 2005 he lived in exile in Sweden as a political refugee.
- Rojhan Beken
Rojhan Beken, is a Turkish musician and singer of Kurdish decent. His family background is from Mardin. He studied in the Trakya University, and established a music band in university. For a number of years, he worked with the Turkish musician "Haluk Levent", and sang several songs in his albums. Rojhan's first Kurdish album was released under the title "Lawo". His second Kurdish album is titled "Evîna Azadî".
- İbrahim Tatlıses
İbrahim Tatlıses is a Turkish singer of Kurdish and Arab origins. In addition to hosting his own television program, İbo Show, on different private television stations and appearing in several dozen films, Tatlıses has been one of Turkey's most prolific recording artists. His twenty-three albums include "Ayağında Kundura" (which broke all sales records in Turkey in 1978), …
- Musa Anter
Musa Anter "Apê Musa", was a Kurdish writer and poet.
- Hiner Saleem
Hiner Saleem or Hiner Salim, (1954-), is a Kurdish film director. He was born in the town of Aqrah in Iraqi Kurdistan. He left Iraq at the age of 17, and soon made his way to Italy, where he completed school and attended university. Later on, he moved to France where he lives now. In 1992, after the First Gulf War, he filmed undercover the living conditions of Iraqi Kurds. This footage was shown at the Venice Film Festival.
- Jumblatt
The Jumblatt Family around the 15-16th century, fleeing persecution from the Ottoman governor. The origin of the Jumblatt family is the Kurdish Janboulad family. To this day, Walid Jumblatt remains the principal leader of the Druzes (an influential religious community found in the Middle East, known for its internal solidarity, the highly spiritual and philosophical orientation, and its influential position in Lebanese politics).
- Lokman Polat
Lokman Polat, is a Kurdish writer. He was born in "Licê" around Diyarbakır in south-eastern Turkey. Before 1980, he was involved in publishing political commentaries and news. He has been arrested several times due to his activities in the field of Kurdish literature, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in absentia. He moved to Sweden in 1984 and began writing short stories in Kurdish.
- Ali Baran
Ali Baran, is a Turkish singer of Kurdish origin. He sings in both dialects of Kurmanji and Kurmanjki(Zaza). He began singing in Kurdish for the first time in 1976. Then he gave a concert in a local theatre Diyarbakır in 1977. He was arrested after the concert and imprisoned for two months. He sought refuge in Germany in 1982. At home his family spoke Kurmanji and Zazaki. He is the son of Mahmud Baran, also a well known singer.
- Husein Muhammed
Husein Muhammed is a Kurdish writer and translator. He is the editor-in-chief of the Kurdish electronic journal Kovara Mehname.
- Mehdi Zana
Mehdi Zana is a former Turkish politician of Kurdish origin. Zana started to work as a tailor in Silvan after he graduated from elementary school. In 1963 he became a member of Workers Party of Turkey (TİP). Two years later he became the head of the party's Silvan branch. In 1978 he was elected as the first independent socialist mayor of Diyarbakır. After 1980 Turkish coup d'état, he was imprisoned in the Military Prison of Diyarbakır. He was incarcerated for 16 years.
- Shahram Nazeri
Shahram Nazeri is a contemporary Iranian Kurdish musician who sings classical Persian and Kurdish music. He is one of Iran's most respected vocalists. He was born in 1950 to a Kurdish family in Kermanshah, Iran. His family was musical and he started studying music at an early age. He is said to have started singing in public at the age of eight. He specializes in the rich tradition of Sufi music, which turns to song the mystical poetry of Rumi, Hafiz, Attar, and others.
- Eskerê Boyîk
Eskerê Boyîk, is a Kurdish poet and writer. He was born into a Yazidi family at the village of "Qundexsaz" in Armenia. He went to school in his village and later in the village of "Elegez". He continued his studies in economics in Yerevan, and graduated in 1966. He has written many articles in Armenian and Russian. In the 60's, he began writing poetry and articles in Kurdish. He is now living in Germany.
- Theodoros Pangalos
Theodoros Pangalos is a Greek politician. Pangalos was actively involved against the 1967 military dictatorship, and in 1968, the junta deprived him of his Greek citizenship. In 1981 he was elected a PASOK MP for the first time; he was re-elected in the 2004 general election. He is the grandson of general and 1926 dictator Theodoros Pangalos. Between 1996 and 1999 he was Minister for Foreign Affairs.
- Darin Zanyar
Darin. He won the "Kurd of the year" award in 2005 presented by Swedish Minister for Public Health and Social Services Morgan Johansson
- Chris Kutschera
Chris Kutschera is a French journalist, researcher, writer, specialist on the Middle East and the Kurds. He has written several books and published numerous articles in the Monde Diplomatique, Les Cahiers de l’Orient, Al Wasat and The Middle East magazine.