Il termine Kurdistan turco è spesso associato e utilizzato nel contesto del nazionalismo curdo, il che lo rende un termine controverso in Turchia. Per questo motivo, c'è ambiguità e il termine ha un significato diverso a seconda del contesto. Il termine è stato usato in articoli scientifici e mezzi di informazione per riferirsi ad aree nella Turchia sud-orientale con una significativa popolazione curda.[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]
^Heinz Kloss e Grant McConnel, Linguistic composition of the nations of the world, vol,5, Europe and USSR, Québec, Presses de l'Université Laval, 1984,
^Ahmet Buran Ph.D., Türkiye'de Diller ve Etnik Gruplar, 2012
^The Kurdish Population by the Kurdish Institute of Paris, Stima del 2017. "The territory, which the Kurds call Northern Kurdistan (Bakurê Kurdistanê), has 14.2 million inhabitants in 2016. According to several surveys, 86% of them are Kurds... So in 2016, there are about 12.2 million Kurds still living in Kurdistan in Turkey. We know that there are also strong Kurdish communities in the big Turkish metropolises like Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Adana, and Mersin. The numerical importance of this "diaspora" is estimated according to sources at 7 to 10 million... Assuming an average estimate of 8 million Kurds in the Turkish part of Turkey, thus arrives at the figure of 20 million Kurds in Turkey."
^Kurdish Awakening: Nation Building in a Fragmented Homeland, (2014), by Ofra Bengio, University of Texas Press