Kurdistani4ever
Kurdistan is my homeland
February 6, 2013
ANKARA,— The Turkish government has abandoned the Turkmen minority in Kirkuk for the sake of energy deals with Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), but the city will remain Turkish forever, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli said Tuesday.
While noting that the Turkish government’s relations with the Iraqi Kurdish administration had improved in recent years, Bahçeli accused “the Peshmerga administration” of conducting secret operations against Turkmen people and called on the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to take rapid action in order to protect Turkmens’ rights, Hurriyet daily news reported.
“Kirkuk is Turkish and will remain Turkish forever,” Bahçeli said during his parliamentary group meeting. “Kirkuk is love, passion to us,” Bahçeli said, adding that he considered Kirkuk to be no different than Istanbul and Ankara.
Bahçeli also extended condolences to Turkmens following a recent coordinated attack on Kirkuk’s police headquarters – a suicide car bomb followed by an assault by grenade-throwing gunmen – that killed 30 people and wounded 88 others.
Recalling messages of solidarity given to Turkmens by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu during an August 2012 visit to Kirkuk, the MHP leader said the AKP government had failed to display this solidarity in practice. Instead, the government has been “inconsistent, insincere and exploitative,” he said.
He also suggested that the energy deals signed by the Turkish government and the Iraqi Kurdish administration have turned into an issue of priority for the AKP instead of the situation of the Turkmens.
The oil-rich province of Kirkuk is one of the most disputed areas by the regional government and the Iraqi government in Baghdad.
The Kurds are seeking to integrate the province into the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region clamming it to be historically a Kurdish city, it lies just south border of the Kurdistan autonomous region, the population is a mix of majority Kurds and minority of Arabs, Christians and Turkmen, lies 250 km northeast of Baghdad.
Kurds have a strong cultural and emotional attachment to Kirkuk, which they call "the Kurdish Jerusalem." Kurds see it as the rightful and perfect capital of an autonomous Kurdistan state.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to the normalization of the situation in Kirkuk city and other disputed areas through having back its Kurdish inhabitants and repatriating the Arabs relocated in the city during the former regime’s time to their original provinces in central and southern Iraq.
The article also calls for conducting a census to be followed by a referendum to let the inhabitants decide whether they would like Kirkuk to be annexed to the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region or having it as an independent province.
The former regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had forced over 250,000 Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's oil industry.
The last ethnic-breakdown census in Iraq was conducted in 1957, well before Saddam began his program to move Arabs to Kirkuk. That count showed 178,000 Kurds, 48,000 Turkomen, 43,000 Arabs and 10,000 Assyrian-Chaldean Christians living in the city.
Copyright ©, respective author or news agency, hurriyetdailynews.com | Ekurd.net | Agencies
Last edited:
