If you’re driving down Broadway between 3:30 and 4:30 p.m. today, you may be surprised by what you see: Kurdish residents are planning to protest outside the Estes Kefauver Federal Building in opposition to recent military action by the Turkish government within Northern Iraq. It’s at least the second time that local Kurds have protested action by Turkey since last October.

Here’s a little background on why:

  • More than 8,000 Kurds live in Nashville, which many of them have come to call “Little Kurdistan.” (Shhhh. Don’t tell  Metro Council member Eric Crafton.)
  • Why Nashville? The answers vary, but here are a few: a similar climate to their native land, affordable housing and consistent job growth and, more recently, because the Nashville Kurdish community is known as one of the most vibrant in the U.S.
  • Did you know that Nashville is home to the first Kurdish mosque in North America, the Salahadeen Center? (I didn’t.)
  • Nashville is also home to what may the the country’s first Kurdish youth gang, although this represents a tiny fraction of the local Kurdish community (one that the large majority of local Kurds are devastated to see emerge).
  • Kurds were outraged when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was executed, because still-pending charges against him for crimes against Kurds, including genocide, were summarily dropped when he was put to death.

For a people without a country of their own, I’m glad that local Kurds at least have a community here to call home. I hope someday those who want to do so are able to return to an autonomous Kurdistan in the Middle East, but until then, I hope our Kurdish neighbors continue to make themselves comfortable right where they are.

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