Karaman

“It is indispensable, therefore, to recognise the existence of the Kurdish phenomenon. This, however, is not possible without information about the historical background. ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS KURD AND KURDISTAN The name Kurdistan goes back to the Sumerian word kur, which more than 5,000 years ago meant something like ‘mountain’. The suffix ti stood for affiliation. The word kurti then had the meaning of mountain tribe or mountain people. The Luwians, who settled in western Anatolia about 3,000 years ago, called Kurdistan Gondwana, which in their language meant land of the villages. In Kurdish, gond is still the word for village. During the reign of Assure (from the early to mid Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age) the Kurds were called Nairi, which translates as ‘people by the river’. In the Middle Ages, under the reign of the Arab sultanates the Kurdish areas were referred to as beled ekrad. The Seljuk sultans who spoke Persian were the first to use the word Kurdistan, land of the Kurds, in their official communiqués. The Ottoman sultans also called the area settled by the Kurds Kurdistan. Until the 1920s, this name was generally used. After 1925 the existence of the Kurds was denied, particularly in Turkey.”
― Abdullah Öcalan, The Political Thought of Abdullah Öcalan: Kurdistan, Woman's Revolution and Democratic Confederalism