FACTBOX-Who are the Kurds?

Oct 21 (Reuters) - Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan called crisis talks that may authorise a cross-border military offensive into Iraq after Kurdish rebels killed at least 12 Turkish soldiers in an ambush on Sunday near the Iraqi border.

Here are some facts about the Kurds and their past.

* WHO ARE THE KURDS?:

-- The Kurds are a non-Arab, mainly Sunni Moslem people, speaking a language related to Persian. With no state of their own, they inhabit a mostly mountainous region that overlaps Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria.

-- For most of their history they have been under foreign rule. In modern times Iran, Iraq and Turkey have resisted an independent Kurdish state and Western powers have seen no reason to help establish one.

-- Kurdish nationalism stirred in the 1890s when the Ottoman Empire was on its last legs. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres, which would have imposed a settlement and colonial carve-up of Turkey after World War One, promised them independence.

-- Three years later Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk tore up the treaty. Kurdish revolts in the 1920s and 1930s were put down by Turkish forces and the armed Kurdish struggle in Turkey was quiescent until 1984. Ankara did not recognise the Kurds as a separate people and they suffered heavy restrictions on their language and culture.

* FIGHT FOR A HOMELAND:

-- The Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) took up arms against Turkey in 1984 with the aim of creating an ethnic homeland in the mainly Kurdish southeast. Since then more than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

-- PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan was captured and tried in 1999. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Oct. 2002 after Turkey abolished the death penalty. Ocalan said he now favoured rights for Kurds by peaceful political means.

-- Fighting dwindled after Ocalan's capture and it also led to a ceasefire and the withdrawal of rebel fighters from Turkey.

* NORTHERN IRAQ:

-- The Kurds fared no better in northern Iraq where, under a British mandate, revolts were put down in 1919, 1923 and 1932.

-- Under leader Mustafa Barzani, the Iraqi Kurds waged an intermittent struggle against Baghdad after World War Two. Kurdish northern Iraq finally won autonomy from Saddam Hussein with U.S. help in 1991, and has benefited from more than a decade of economic development. While there has been some violence, it has not approached the levels seen in Baghdad.

* THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES:

-- Saddam's fall deepened feelings for autonomy and in September 2006 the president of Iraq's Kurdistan region ordered the Iraqi national flag be replaced with the Kurdish one in government buildings.

-- Some 3,000 PKK fighters are based in northern Iraq and launch attacks on security and civilian targets in Turkish territory. A few thousand PKK rebels are also believed to be inside Turkey.

-- Around 40 Turkish soldiers have been killed in fighting in the past month alone. Erdogan's government is under heavy domestic pressure to pursue the PKK into northern Iraq.