Kurdish community in Australia 50 years on

In Australia, Kurdish migrants first arrived in the second half of the 1960s and early 1970s mainly from Turkey. In the late 1970s families from Syria and Lebanon were also present in Australia.Since the second half of the 1980s, the majority of Kurds arriving in Australia have been from Iraq and Iran; many of them were accepted under the Humanitarian Programme. However, since 2015 due to the war in Syria and Iraq and ISIS’s occupation of many areas in those two countries, a number of Kurds and Yazidis have arrived in Australia as refugees. Mr Riza Colpan has been in Australia for almost fifty years. He arrived in Australia from Turkey in early 1970 following a 1967 agreement between Australia and Turkey. Mr Colpan is one of the first Kurds from Northern Kurdistan (Turkey) who arrived in Australia. We spoke to him about his thoughts and commitments to the Kurdish community in Sydney from mid 1970s to the 1990s.

Kurdish author Riza Colpan Source: Supplied