Archive for the ‘Kirkuk’ Category
President Gul receives Iraqi Turkmen official
Turkish President Abdullah Gul received the new chair of the Iraqi Turkmen Front Arshad Salihi and an accompanying delegation in Ankara.
Speaking to reporters prior to his meeting with Salihi behind closed doors, President Gul said that Salihi was recently elected the chair of the Iraqi Turkmen Front and was a deputy from Kirkuk at the Iraqi Parliament. Read the rest of this entry »
Turkmen form special security force in Kirkuk
The Turkmen community in Kirkuk will form a special security force to protect the Turkmen citizens of the disputed city.
Najat Hassan, representative of the Turkmen in Kirkuk, announced the new unit with 100-150 armed men Thursday. Read the rest of this entry »
Turkmen Policy on the Rise in Iraq
Until the elections in 2010 the Turkmens who have not been effective in the Iraq policy and who were put out of action in the process of restructuring of Iraq began to take important steps. Particularly, in pursuit of the formation of new government, an observable increase is being talked about in Turkmen policy. After the general elections on 7 March 2011 in Iraq, the Turkmens who gained 10 deputies and 3 ministries seem to be risen from the ashes. The Turkmens who were maybe most influenced by the political polarization and the corruption within the state, managed to make their voice heard especially with the last moves by the Iraqi Turkmen Front. The Turkmens started to take part in Iraq policy, under the leadership of Arshad al-Salihi who became and eminent figure in the Turkmen politics as of the day when he returned to Iraq from Syria. Salihi was at first as the head of Kirkuk province of Turkmen Front and he was elected the head of Iraqi Turkmen Front in May,. The Iraqi Turkmen Front has been undergoing a reorganization, which is evident in both management structure and policy strategy. Read the rest of this entry »
Iraqi refugees wait for new lives in Istanbul’s ’Little Baghdad’
A neighborhood known as ’Son Durak’ (Last Stop) in Istanbul’s Kurtuluş area is a way station for Iraqis who have fled the Iraq war since 2003. The community, also called ’Little Baghdad,’ is mostly populated by Christian refugees from central and southern Iraq whose meeting-point is a café on the neighborhood square
Sitting inside the Genç Kardeşler Café behind the bus station in Istanbul’s Kurtuluş area, it is easy to see why the “Son Durak” (Last Stop) neighborhood is also called “Little Baghdad.” Read the rest of this entry »
UN envoy calls for talks over Kirkuk elections
Negotiations must begin shortly over finally holding long-delayed provincial elections in the divided flashpoint Iraqi province of Kirkuk, the UN’s envoy to Baghdad said.
UN special representative Ad Melkert called for a conference to be held in Baghdad involving all of the religious and ethnic communities in Kirkuk, which is at the centre of a tract of disputed territory that is claimed by both the central government and Kurdish regional authorities. Read the rest of this entry »
Kurd-Turkmen talks top Turk PM Iraq agenda
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is to visit Iraq and attempt to broker talks between ethnic Turkmen and Kurds over their rival claims to the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, a Turkmen politician said on Sunday.
“Turkey is pressuring us to narrow our differences with the Kurds” over Kirkuk, said Saadeddin Arkij, head of Iraq’s Turkmen Front, the largest political party representing the country’s Turkmen minority. Read the rest of this entry »
Turkish FM meets Iraq’s Turkmen leaders
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Saturday met with leaders of Iraq’s Turkmen population from Tal Afar who launched a peace initiative to end a long-standing feud between the city’s Shiite and Sunni Turkmen groups.
“The entire Iraq is precious to us. The fate of the Iraqis is the fate of Turkey. We will not let any Iraqi citizen down. The people of Tal Afar should live without knowing who is Shiite and who is Sunni,” Davutoglu said.
The Turkish foreign minister said Turkey would use all resources to open a university in Tal Afar, adding that Turkey’s development agency would also exert efforts to construct new houses for those Turkmen returning to Tal Afar. Read the rest of this entry »
The Turkic character of KASHGAR city in East Turkistan and of KERKUK city in Turkmeneli (Iraq) must be preserved!
ITF EU representative Dr. Hassan Aydinli spoke to the organiser of the conference, MEP Frieda Brepoels, about the city of KERKUK , the Turkmens’ cultural capital in Iraq , saying that KERKUK, as KASHGAR, deserved to receive the attention of international organisations such as UNESCO, the Society for Threatened Peoples, etc. He informed her that under the arabization policy of the former regime several important Turkmen monuments and traditional Turkish houses in Kerkuk had been destroyed and that since April 2003 when the U.S. military allowed the Kurdish Peshmerga to invade and occupy the city the Kurds too were trying to obliterate the city’s Turkmen character .
Read the rest of this entry »
Kirkuk: a ticking time bomb in volatile north Iraq
Haji Mohammed Ismail, a tribal elder in Kirkuk, home to one of Iraq’s biggest oilfields, is bracing for the worst once US troops leave the country and Arab and Kurd face off with no one to halt the fight.
“As soon as US forces leave Iraq, there will be civil war. In a place like this, the strongest will devour the weakest,” said Ismail, 80, an Iraqi Arab, as he leaned over a mud brick wall in his village near the disputed northern city. “There is a lot of tension. People are being thrown out of their homes and humiliated. They want revenge. Something bad is going to happen.” Read the rest of this entry »
Car bomb kills 7 in Iraq’s Kirkuk
“A car bomb in a restive region of northern Iraq killed seven people and wounded 61 on Friday, police said. ”
A car bomb in a restive region of northern Iraq killed seven people and wounded 61 on Friday, police said.
The bomb in a parked car detonated near the home of a provincial official from the Turkoman minority in the town of Tuz Khurmato, southeast of the city of Kirkuk in a region wrestled over by Iraq’s majority Arabs and minority Kurds.
Iraqi police at the scene found a second car packed with rockets and explosives, and were working to defuse it, a police source said.
In Baquba, part of Diyala province northeast of Baghdad, a car bomb wounded at least 30 people, hospital sources said. The device exploded near a police captain’s house, wounding six members of his family and shattering windows of nearby homes. Read the rest of this entry »