“It caught everyone off guard,” Mr. Taabur said. “The Kurds have been the most reliable ally to the United States for centuries. We feel a betrayal.”

Some have been protesting, and lobbying the city government to put pressure on their representatives in Congress to support the Kurds and impose sanctions on Turkey. Mr. Taabur and others just set up a meeting with Representative Jim Cooper, who joined in a recent local Kurdish rally for peace. They’ve been giving media interviews to spread awareness of their countrymen’s plight.

And whether too busy or too worried, they have been showing up for games in smaller numbers. But their enthusiasm for the Titans is largely undimmed. And many non-Kurdish friends have approached them to express support.

Most of these Kurdish-Americans came to Nashville as refugees in the 1990s, escaping the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. That same decade, the city welcomed its first professional football team after the Oilers moved from Houston to Tennessee; they became the Titans in 1999.

Mr. Taabur, 34, who arrived here at age 10 and recently received his master’s degree in criminal justice at Tennessee State University, remembers the day he became a Titans fan. It was Super Bowl XXXIV, in 2000 — the only time the Titans have ever made the league’s championship game. They lost to the St. Louis Rams, 23-16, falling just one yard short of a touchdown at the end.

Mr. Taabur was watching at home, and though still getting acquain ted with the sport, “I literally cried,” he said.

When Ramadhan Sindhi, 25, who works in commercial cleaning, first came to the United States in 1996, his family was placed in low-income housing. During one holiday season, eight Titans players came to his home as part of a charitable initiative.