ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Kurdish organizations have called on Kurds in the United Kingdom to register for March 21’s official census to prevent themselves from being registered as Turks, Iranians, Syrians or Iraqis, and to gain more recognition in the United Kingdom.

“The census is important in general, which establishes the best picture of society and its constituents and everyone's needs. Therefore everyone has to play their part in building that inclusive picture,” the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) High Representative to the UK, Karwan Jamal Tahir, told Kurdistan 24.

“For the Kurdistanian to participate in the census would be two-fold responsibility, one as a British citizen to take part; secondly, it is the national responsibility to register themselves describing their nationality and ethnicity as Kurdish and their language as Kurdish. This will be the opportunity to register the Kurds as a nation and to determine the Kurdistanian population in England and Wales,” Jamal said.

He added that registering would allow British authorities to have a clear picture of the Kurdish community in the UK and help to preserve equality and fairness in providing services they need for the next decade and beyond. “Therefore I call upon all Kurdistanians to play their part and describe their national identity as Kurdish and their language and ethnic group as Kurdish.”

According to the campaign group Kurds and the British Census, “some members of the Kurdish Community, unfortunately, have wrongly filled in the boxes of Ethnicity and Language."

“As a result, in Germany, most of the Kurds registered as Turks, even though it is estimated that up to half of the three million people from Turkey in the country, are ethnically Kurds,” the group said.

Several other politicians have called on Kurds to register, including the former mayor of Diyarbakir in southern Turkey, and former MP for the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Osman Baydemir.

“Most importantly, once the true larger size of the Kurdish communities become apparent, the British political parties, in their quest to attract the Kurdish votes would review their policies towards Kurdistan and may even field Kurdish candidates in the areas with high numbers of Kurdish-speaking voters,” the group said.

Miran Hassan, a political consultant and former UK parliament staffer who has worked with the UK Office of National Statistics on the inclusion of Kurdish in the census told Kurdistan 24 that the “census helps us build a detailed snapshot of our wider society.”

“For Kurds, it serves multiple purposes, mainly that we will highlight our existence to policy makers to ensure our needs are considered in local and national decision making,” he said.

“It will also offer a detailed snapshot of the community in the UK, something which can help Kurdish organisations here but also support the KRG in understanding it’s diaspora, which can be a major tool in its diplomacy. Most excitingly, 2021 census data can be used by future generations of British Kurds to explore their roots, as it is used in linking ancestry after the data is released in 100 years.”

According to London-based Kurdish activist and internet content creator Hakar (also known by the nickname ‘IamHaks’), the survey could “change the government’s approach towards global Kurdish issues as we know there’s way more of us here than they think. So it will ensure they are more careful when considering us.”

Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly