1) How many Turkmen parties will be represented at the upcoming legislative elections, in which coalitions?

There are two categories of parties:

- Those created by the Turkmens themselves which really defend the Turkmen cause.

- Those formed and financed by the Kurds (Barzani and Talabani). These are Turkmen in name only and they are serving Kurdish interests.

The first category is composed of:

-The Iraqi Turkmen Front, a political organization composed of several parties and Turkmen civil associations, presided by Dr. Sadettin Ergeç . The Iraqi Turkmen Front presents its own list in the province of Erbil, everywhere else in Iraq, the Iraqi Turkmen Front has entered in coalition with the Iraqiya list, led by Mr. Iyad Allaoui.

-The Islamic Union of Iraqi Turkmens, party presided by Mr. Abbas al-Bayati. It presents its candidates and has entered in coalition with the list of Dawlat al-Kanoun, led by Nouri al-Maliki.

-The AlKarar al Turkmani party, presided by Mr. Farook Abdullah, is also part of the Dawlat al-Kanoun coalition of Nouri al-Maliki.

-The Türkmeneli party, presided by Mr. Riyad Sarikahya presents itself in the elections in the coalition led by Ammar al-Hakim, Head of the Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council.

-The Turkmen Sadrist Movement of Mr. Fawzi Akrem Terzi, is also part of the Ammar al-Hakim coalition. He is head of the list in the province of Erbil.

-The Adalat Turkmen party, presided by Mr. Anwar Bayrakdar has entered in the Al-Tawafuk Al-Iraqi coalition of Usama Tawfiq Mukhlif.

As for the other so-called ‘Turkmen’ parties which present themselves at the upcoming elections, they are three. They are all in the Kurdish coalition Barzani + Talabani. I neither wish to remember their names nor say anything whatsoever about them. For us, these are “cartoon parties”, i.e. fabricated by the Kurds in order to divide the Turkmens and assimilate those who are under their control or who are employed by them.

2) What are their main demands?

The main demands of the six parties I mentioned are:

-To preserve the unity of Iraq.

-For Iraqi Turkmens to be recognized as the third main ethnic community in Iraq, with rights and duties equal to those of the Arabs and Kurds in Iraq, namely: the recognition of the Turkmen language (Turkish) as the third official language of the country; the effective participation of the Turkmen community at all levels of power in Iraq, by the inclusion of their political representatives in the supreme institutions which govern the country, such as the Presidential Council, Government Council, Parliamentary Presidency, Supreme Council of Justice, Chief of Staff of the Army, of the Police and of the Security. Turkmens have been excluded from these institutions since the invasion of Iraq, as the political power, under the anglo-american occupation, from 9th April 2003, has been attributed on an ethnic-sectarian basis and exclusively to the parties who collaborated with the Occupiers (Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis).

-Either modify the Iraqi constitution or write a new modern constitution compatible with our time, eliminating the absurd terminologies which have been included in the present constitution, namely the contested territories and the obsolete articles, such as Article 140 which concerned the future of Kerkuk Province, re-named Al-Tamim by the former regime in 1972. The central question is the future and belonging of its capital, Kerkuk, with its enormous oil reserves, which has been historically and culturally Turkmen for over 8 centuries.

It is necessary to remember that Kerkuk has been subjected to two successive policies of ethnic modifications during the past four decades: a planned and systematic arabization policy and ethnic modification in favour of the Arabs by the previous regime between 1968 and 2003; then a planned kurdification and ethnic modification in favour of the Kurds. The latter has been more extended, more rapid and more violent than the former. It started on 10th April 2003 when the militias of the Kurdish parties “Peshmerga” of Barzani and Talabani occupied Kerkuk with authorization and complicity of the U.S. invasion forces.

-To obtain cultural autonomy for the Turkmens of Iraq in their region, i.e. in the region known as Türkmeneli, where the Turkmens constitute the majority, and which is situated between the region mainly inhabited by Arabs and the region with a Kurdish majority. Türkmeneli stretches from Tel Afer, at the West of Mosul, until Bedre, at the East of Bagdad.

-To recuperate all the properties and agricultural lands belonging to the Turkmens which have been confiscated by the previous regime and which have not yet been liberated or returned.

-To recuperate all the properties and agricultural lands belonging to the Turkmens which have been occupied and confiscated by the Kurdish militias since 10th April 2003.

-To liberate Iraq from foreign occupation forces.

-To make Iraq a unified, democratic and modern country, where all citizens will be equal.

3) What about the situation in Kerkuk?

The present situation in Kerkuk, which continues since 10th April 2003, is neither satisfying nor acceptable for the Turkmens. Since that date, Barzani and Talabani have been authorized, for their collaboration with the Occupier, to install their Peshmerga and over 600.000 individuals coming from the autonomous Kurdish region, in order to modify the demographics of the city. Among them, some non-Iraqi Kurds… This intolerable situation is also denounced by the Arabs of Kerkuk.

If the new electoral law has been so difficult to be voted, it is because it has been contested by the Turkmens and Arabs of Kerkuk. This is why the election results for the Province will only be valid for one year. They will be conditioned to the verification of the authenticity of the voters’ lists established by the Kurdish authorities. If it appears that they have been exaggerated in favour of the Kurds, a new list will be established and new legislative elections will take place in Kerkuk Province.

We, Turkmens, hope that the legislative elections of 7th March 2010, which will take place according to the principle of open lists, will bring to the Parliament a majority of patriotic and more nationalist Iraqis, who will be less sectarian. We hope that they will maintain Kerkuk in a unified Iraq. Finally, we hope that the new majority will categorically reject the unjustified hegemonic demands of the Kurds over the city and over the so-called “other contested territories” in Iraq.

Source: turkmenelinews.blogspot.com/2010/02/iraq-legislative-election-campaign-in.html

Genel Enerji, owned by Çukurova Holding, one of Turkey’s largest conglomerates with investments in the automotive, telecommunications, media, textile, energy and information-technology services sectors, is seeking loans for the refinery’s cost of $510 million.

The firm, which has the authority to establish a refinery and conduct oil exploration in the Taq Taq field as a part of its deal with the Kurdish administration in northern Iraq, has prepared a report titled “Midstream Opportunity in Kurdistan” for the refinery investment.

According to the report, which was acquired by daily Milliyet, the refinery is expected to be built in three phases and will cost $510 million. The Regional Kurdish Administration supports investments in order to cover northern Iraq’s oil demand and export oil.

The Taq Taq Petroleum Refining Company, a subsidiary of Genel Enerji, will build the refinery, which will have a daily capacity of 60,000 barrels, exceeding other refineries in the region in terms of both capacity and technology, according to the ownership and strategy section of the report.

Seeking financing

During the two phases, the refinery will have a daily production capacity of 40,000 barrels by 2011 and 60,000 by 2013. The cash to flow following the construction of the first two phases will benefit the investment cost of the third phase, according to the report.

“The deals were signed in 2009. The construction of Phase 1 and Phase 2 will commence in 2010. Within the fourth quarter of 2011, Phase 1 will start production and the construction of Phase 3 will start. Phase 3 will operate at full capacity in the second quarter of 2013,” the report said. “The Kurdish administration in northern Iraq will supply crude oil and the Iraqi government will market the output of the refinery.”

Genel Enerji is reported to be seeking financing for the investment by submitting the report to several financial institutions. The process for the share of revenues is ongoing. The price of oil will be determined in line with the free-market model.

The cost of the operation is $2.75 per barrel.

The company will be exempt from taxes levied by the Regional Kurdish Administration and the central government for the first 25 years. The regional administration will continue paying the company in case of a cease in oil production at Taq Taq, a disruption in transfer or the expiration of stocks. If the firm bears losses, the regional administration will support it.

The Taq Taq Operating Company, jointly owned by Genel Enerji of Turkey and Addax Petroleum International of Canada, is building a terminal with a daily capacity of 1 million barrels near Taq Taq. The terminal investment aims to make transfers to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline and oil export through trailer-truck loading. The trailer-truck loading station will have a daily capacity of 30,000 barrels. The company is also building a 24-inch pipeline with a length of 64 kilometers to run from Koya to Kirkuk. This line will be connected to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan pipeline for export purposes.

The organization of the Taq Taq Operating Company encompasses a permanent staff of approximately 50 petroleum-industry experts originating from Iraq, Turkey, Britain, France, Canada and other countries. It maintains offices in the Turkish capital of Ankara, Arbil in northern Iraq and within the Taq Taq license area.

The Taq Taq field is located approximately 60 kilometers northeast of Kirkuk and 85 kilometers southeast of Arbil.

Source:Hurriyet Daily News
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkish-energy-giant-to-establish-refinery-in-northern-iraq-2010-01-25

“We strongly condemn this terrorist attack,” which killed Yavuz Efendioğlu at his home on Sunday, a foreign ministry statement said. The ministry called for the perpetrators of the “cowardly” attack to be found as soon as possible and brought to justice.

Efendioğlu, provincial chairman of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, was shot dead by gunmen in a speeding car in front of his house on Sunday in eastern Mosul, 390 km north of Baghdad. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu called relatives of Efendioğlu and the leader of the Iraqi Turkmen Front to offer his condolences.

“It is important for efforts to ensure tranquility and stability in Iraq. Turkey will continue mobilizing all its capabilities to assist the Iraqi people in this critical process,” the ministry said.

Iraq’s Turkish-speaking Turkmen community is made up of about 500,000 people living mostly in Mosul, Kirkuk and Tal Afar. They have been the targets of a number of deadly attacks, blamed by local authorities on al-Qaeda.

The Turkmen population and Arabs of northern Iraq are in open conflict with the Kurdish community, which wants the oil town of Kirkuk and several other areas to join its semi-autonomous region.

Compiled from AA and AFP stories by the Daily News staff.

Source: Hurriyet
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkey-condemns-killing-of-iraqi-turkmen-leader-2009-11-23

Davutoğlu signified that the elections were could be a “turning point” in the two countries’ relations.During the meeting, Davutoğlu said Turkey wanted a peaceful and prosperous Iraq, reported Anatolia news agency.

Al- Hakim stressed the importance of preserving the rights of all Iraqis, including those of the Turkmen people in Kirkuk. He welcomed Turkey’s support of Iraq’s democratization process and cooperation on water policy.

In an interview with broadcaster CNNTürk, al-Hakim responded to a question about Turkey’s recent foreign policy moves: “We see Turkey as a bridge between East and West. Of course, we welcome Turkey’s improved relations with the East. But it is important that Turkey maintains its position with the West at the same time.”

Source:  Hurriyet
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=davutoglu-and-iraqi-shiite-leader-discuss-relations-2009-11-18

Members of the minority groups are being singled out by extremist insurgent groups and also are caught in the middle of a struggle for land and resources between Arabs and the central government on one hand and leaders of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region on the other, said the report, which was released in the Kurdish region’s capital, Erbil, and focused on Christians, Shabaks and Yazidis in Nineveh Province.

The extremist attacks have cost many hundreds of lives and, the report notes, “struck at the social infrastructure of minority communities, leaving victims and others fearful to carry on with their everyday lives.”

Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, said, “When you talk about wiping out a whole community that has been there since antiquity, it’s a looming catastrophe.”

The report is particularly critical of the policies and tactics pursued by Kurdish authorities who control Nineveh’s disputed territories through the heavy presence of their security forces and political party offices. The report describes how the Kurdish government has sought to repress minorities, subsume the identity of Shabaks and Yazidis into that of Kurds and sow rifts within the groups with bribes and patronage while suppressing dissent through violence, torture, arrests and killings.

The United States military has recognized the Arab-Kurdish conflict in northern Iraq as the main driver for continued instability in Iraq. The disputed territories extend from Sinjar in Nineveh, in northwestern Iraq, to Mandali in Diyala Province, in the east, and include the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

After a series of bombings in July and August against minorities in Nineveh that killed at least 143, wounded scores and flattened villages, the American military commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, announced plans to deploy United States troops along with members of the Kurdish pesh merga force and the Iraqi Army in the disputed areas to stop groups linked to Al Qaeda from exploiting friction between Arabs and Kurds.

With the exception of occasional joint operations and meetings between pesh merga and Iraqi Army officers that occur because of American insistence, no progress has been made in deploying the joint forces in the disputed areas or getting the Kurds and the central government to cooperate on security in a meaningful way, said Sheik Jaffar Sheik Mustafa, who is the Kurdish region’s equivalent of minister of defense.

Mr. Mustafa said the combined forces would be based throughout the north and conduct joint raids and patrols and staff checkpoints. He said the Kurdish authorities had agreed to the idea but opposition was coming from Baghdad and the Arab-led provincial government in Nineveh, which see the arrangement as an infringement on their sovereignty and want Kurdish troops to retreat from the areas they occupy outside their region’s 1991 border.

“I think this joint force is crucial at this juncture,” he said.

A senior American official in Kirkuk said he was optimistic that the joint force would ultimately become functional.

A representative of the United States Embassy in Baghdad said that “in tandem with an ambitious push to improve security for all in the province, including embattled minorities,” American officials were working to resolve a political standoff between Sunni Arabs and Kurds in Nineveh’s provincial capital, Mosul, that has exacerbated the situation.

After its victory in the provincial elections in January in Nineveh, a Sunni Arab-led coalition excluded the second-place Kurdish coalition from all senior posts in the new local government and demanded that the pesh merga leave the Nineveh areas they controlled. In response, the Kurds boycotted meetings of the provincial council and used force to prevent the Arab governor and other senior officials allied with him from entering parts of Nineveh.

Mr. Mustafa said the joint forces must include Americans in order to secure the area and carry out Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, which outlines the mechanism for resolving the fate of disputed territories. Kurds are clinging to it, but Arabs reject it.

“We will not give up one inch of the areas that we occupy until Article 140 is implemented,” Mr. Mustafa said.

He dismissed the findings of the Human Rights Watch report as “false.” He said that there might have been violations committed by individual Kurdish security officers against minorities in Nineveh but that this did not reflect the policy of the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Source: New York Times by Sam Dagher
URL: www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/world/middleeast/11erbil.html?_r=2&hpw

The ongoing dispute between Iraq’s central government and the Regional Kurdish Administration in northern Iraq is once again threatening to become a “human rights catastrophe” for minority communities, according to a report by a leading rights watchdog.

Meanwhile, experts on the region said it was nothing new that minorities in the region were being squeezed between the two power centers.

The report by the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the small groups in the area – such as Christians, Shabaks, Yazidis and Turkmens – are being targeted by insurgents and are stuck in the middle between the regional Kurdish authority in northern Iraq and the government in Baghdad. “Iraqi Christians, Yazidis, and Shabaks have suffered extensively since 2003,” the Associated Press quoted Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at HRW, as saying. “Iraqi authorities, both Arab and Kurdish, need to rein in security forces, extremists and vigilante groups to send a message that minorities cannot be attacked with impunity.”

However, Mehmet Yegin, an expert on the region from the International Strategic Research Institution, or USAK, said minorities in the region have long been suffering between these two power sources. “It was in the 1970s when Saddam [Hussein], even before he ruled the country, was trying to settle the [Ba'ath Party’s] legitimacy over Kurds and Arabs, saying they are the two main elements for the state, even though,” Yegin said. When the groups could not determine their own future, they could be used as a card by ruling powers in accordance to their benefits, he said.

The 51-page report, released in the city of Arbil, criticizes the central government for failing to protect the minority groups, but also levels a long list of criticism against Kurdish authorities. It accused them of intimidating those who resists Kurdish “expansionist plans,” carrying out arbitrary arrests and detentions. The report cited attempts by Kurdish authorities to win favor with some minority groups by, for example, paying for new places of worship.

The report said the long-standing territorial dispute between northern Iraq’s Kurds and the Arab-dominated government threatens to erupt again. “It risks creating another full-blown human rights catastrophe for the small minority communities who have lived there throughout the ages,” the report said. Under former dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, hundreds of thousands of Kurds and other minorities were expelled from their homes and ethnic Arabs moved in, changing the area’s demographics and ethnic balance. Since Saddam’s overthrow, Kurds have argued much of this territory belongs to them.

The oil-rich city of Kirkuk has long been one of the key flashpoints in this debate. Kurds claim it as theirs, while many Arabs argue the Kurds are trying to flood the city with new Kurdish residents to tip the balance in their favor. The Kurdish-Arab debate over voting rights in the city threatened to derail a key election law needed to carry out Iraq’s nationwide balloting in January, but lawmakers struck a compromise on Sunday.

Turkmens are one of the minority groups living in Iraq and they have long been one of the main actors in the disputes. Sancar Akkoyunlu, the deputy head of the Iraqi Turks Culture and Solidarity Association based in Istanbul refused to talk in depth via phone with the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on this issue. “There is lot to tell and it would not be appropriate to talk on the phone to prevent this issue to be passed off as it is usually done in the media,” he said.

“The issue about Turkmens there is that they mainly stay in between Turkey and the central Iraqi government. When Turkey intervened in the issue, they probably could not even get the rights that they might otherwise get. Because of this, they refused Turkey’s intervention, but then they remained without someone to protect them,” Yegin said.

HRW also focused on the issue of the Ninevah province, with its large mix of minority groups and where Kurds have been trying to extend their influence. Kurdish gains have alienated many Sunni Arabs there and have helped turn the province’s capital of Mosul into one of the last hotbeds in the insurgency, the report details. The minorities have often been targeted by devastating insurgent attacks, HRW said. It cited the late 2008 insurgent campaign that left 40 Chaldo-Assyrians dead and drove thousands more from their homes in Mosul. In 2007, more than 500 members of the Yazidi minority were killed by suicide truck bombs in the small village of Qahataniya.

After July and August bombings of minorities in Ninevah, the American military commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, proposed joint patrols made up of U.S., Kurdish and Iraqi military troops, but those plans have not materialized. In a statement on its Web site Tuesday, the regional Kurdish authority in northern Iraq denied the HRW report’s charges and said it demonstrates a “systematic misperception of the circumstances in Ninevah and a worrying ignorance of Iraqi history.”

The statement said the Kurdish authority in northern Iraq insists on tolerance throughout Iraq and blamed insurgents for attacks on minorities. “The main thrust of this report could be grossly misleading,” the statement said, adding that the Kurdish authority in northern Iraq “has done more for the protection of minorities than any other entity in Iraq, and continues to insist on tolerance and peaceful coexistence.”

But Yahya Ghazi, in charge of the human rights bureau of Iraqi Vice-President Tariq al-Hashemi, said his office has contacts with minorities in Mosul and the surrounding areas. He said the government knows the weight of the problems they are facing and is trying to assist them.

Source: Hurriyet
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=rights-report-criticizes-kurds-over-minorities-2009-11-11

Two years after a terrorist attack on the Dağlıca military outpost, which had brought the two countries to the brink of war, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu orchestrated a huge initiative of friendship and peace toward northern Iraq with his visit on Friday and Saturday. Being the lead figure of a Turkish foreign policy that has dispensed with its rigid habits and has undertaken a radical paradigm shift in parallel to the country’s painful process of evolution from a national security state to a democratic one, Davutoğlu visited Arbil, the most critical step of his unusual visit to Iraq.I call it unusual because no country’s foreign minister has ever moved around in different cities of a foreign country as comfortably as he does in the cities of his homeland. During his visit to Iraq, which was characterized with a warmth that went beyond diplomatic convention, Davutoğlu and the accompanying Turkish delegation were welcomed with great empathy not only in Basra, a predominantly Shiite city in the southernmost part of Iraq, but also in Arbil, the capital of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in the northernmost part of the country, as well as in the multi-ethnic city of Mosul, which was hit hardest by chaos and violence during the occupation of Iraq. The fact that Davutoğlu was accompanied by Foreign Trade Minister Zafer Çağlayan and about 80 Turkish businessmen was proof that the visit had not only political and diplomatic but also commercial targets.

We can safely assert that, thanks to this visit, Davutoğlu has included Iraq, or more correctly, northern Iraq, in his Middle East vision for creating a regional basin of peace. Massoud Barzani, the head of the KRG, has expressed support for this vision, which is likely to create radical changes in the course of bilateral relations between Turkey and northern Iraq. The regional administration in Arbil can be expected to undertake a much more constructive role in terms of eliminating Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorism, the most fundamental problem defeating a peaceful and holistic vision of the Middle East. The Barzani administration, which lent support to Turkey’s democratic initiative, one that is progressing irreversibly, it seems, will continue to extend this support so long as the Turkish government perseveres in this process.

Northern Iraq’s support for this democratic settlement process will marginalize the PKK and render it ineffective because almost all of the 332-kilometer-long common border between Turkey and Iraq is actually a border between Turkey and the Kurdish administration. The security of this border is maintained not by Iraqi soldiers, but by the Kurdish peshmerga. Given the fact that Turkey’s connection to the rest of Iraq is maintained through this region, it is unthinkable for Turkey to continue to ignore the regional administration in northern Iraq. Observing that Barzani and his administration were extremely happy with this major move to remove this anomaly is proof that there is a process of fundamental change in how we see the region and vice versa.

I do not exaggerate in calling it an anomaly. Between 1991 and 2003, Turkey had very good relations with Kurds, while it had virtually no ties with other groups (except the Turkmens) in Iraq, but after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Ankara quickly severed its relations with the Kurds in northern Iraq and developed its ties with other ethnic and religious groups and opted to maintain a tense distance with the Kurds. But this distance was contrary to the nature of business and to realpolitik. What could be more natural than normalizing relations with northern Iraq, where almost all of the cities which are quickly gaining a modern appearance are being built by Turkish companies, and where more than 500 Turkish companies operate, and where there are numerous Turkish schools, including one university? Even the fact that Turkey’s trade with Iraq, amounting to $7 billion, is exclusively made through northern Iraq was sufficient proof that the policy of ignoring the KRG is an unsustainable one. It is good to see that this inevitability has been realized, albeit late, and that necessary steps are being undertaken to rectify it.

Overjoyed not only by the arrival of Turkish ministers, but also with the landing of a Turkish Airlines (THY) aircraft at the Arbil airport, Kurds of northern Iraq did not hide their enthusiasm and expressed their sincerity with a simple sentence: “First minister, first plane.” Defying security considerations, Minister Davutoğlu entered the ancient Kayseri bazaar in Arbil, which underlines the fact that Turks are a natural part of this land. It should be noted that a local friend of ours said even Barzani cannot move around in this bazaar as easily as Davutoğlu.

It is truly exciting to witness the process of the creation of a new Middle East along with the process of creating a New Turkey by driving military-civilian relations to democratic standards and transforming the national security state into a democratic civilian state and handling its acute problems through initiatives.
 
Source: Today’s Zaman by Bulent Kenes
URL: www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/yazarDetay.do?haberno=191720

Iraqi Turkmen representatives had gathered in the Turkish capital upon an invitation by Bilkent University Rector Ali Doğramacı, whose family’s origin is Iraqi Turkmen. President Abdullah Gül last week hosted the representatives at an iftar (fast-breaking dinner) at the presidential palace.

“Participants at the meeting in Ankara decided to call on the Iraqi Turkmen society to participate in the elections more actively; to maintain more participation with other segments of Iraq; and to make contributions to the best way to represent their own identities,” the joint declaration said, announcing that they will establish a “joint coordination board” for determining plans and mechanisms of joint efforts by Iraqi Turkmens. 

Source: Zaman
URL: www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-186371-iraqi-turkmen-groups-agree-on-joint-action.html

A summit to unite Iraqi Turkmen and discuss ways to boost their numbers in parliament took place last week in Ankara. Iraqi Turkmen Front, or ITF, Chairman Sadettin Ergeç, Iraqi Turkmen Assembly President Yunus Bayraktar, Iraqi Turkmen Islamic Union Secretary-General Abbas Betyati, Iraqi Turkmen Justice Party Chairman Enver Bayraktar and other Turkmen deputies serving in the Iraqi parliament, along with chairs of Turkmen associations in Turkey, constituted the summit’s 23 participants.

“The leaders discussed their strategy for the January elections. They are planning to mobilize Turkmen voters around the globe to gain the maximum number of seats,” ITF Turkey representative Sadun Köprülü told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review in an interview Sunday.

Turkmen are combining their power through the “One List” program, Köprülü said.

“The election campaign is speeding up while a database is in progress to show where Turkmen live and how they can cast their votes,” he added.

President Abdullah Gül also hosted an iftar, or fast-breaking dinner, for Turkmen leaders, underscoring Turkey’s wish to see Iraqi Turkmen working together.

Following two days of meetings and the iftar at Çankaya Palace, a joint declaration was released late Saturday. “Iraqi Turkmen are called on to actively join in the upcoming elections along with other ethnic groups in Iraq in order to contribute in the representation of their identity,” the statement read.

Participants also agreed to set up a coordination committee to plan joint campaigns.

In line with this effort, the ITF’s Turkey office is preparing to move its headquarters, currently in Ankara, to Istanbul, and the organization has started opening new branches in various districts, including İzmir, Antalya and Konya, where the Turkmen population is believed to be high, said Köprülü.

“We are working on a database showing where our voters live and how they can be mobilized,” he added. “We’ve gotten many calls so far, even from Van and Diyarbakır. They have told us about their household sizes and other details.”

Source: Hurriyet
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=itc-to-open-new-offices-in-turkey-2009-09-06

Kurds, reckoned to form the majority of the province’s 900,000 population, are eager to press on with the vote in the hope of removing direct control of the area from Baghdad and including it in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

Political stalemate meant that Kirkuk took part neither in Iraqi provincial elections earlier this year nor Kurdish ones last month, but leaders of the province’s minority Arab and Turkmen communities believe they may have found a way of breaking the deadlock.

They are seeking a national vote on a proposal to scrap the already-delayed Kirkuk referendum.

The Arab and Turkmen leaders have pledged to back proposed amendments that would remove Article 140 of Iraq’s 2005 constitution, which required a referendum over the status of Kirkuk and a census to take place by the end of 2007.

Neither has taken place and the minorities say their validity has timed out.

If approved by lawmakers, the proposed amendments could be put to a nationwide plebiscite next January in tandem with the scheduled Iraqi general election, according to the state-run Al-Sabah newspaper.

The amendments are among around 100 changes to the constitution suggested by a parliamentary committee, the newspaper said.

“This issue is not in the hands of the Iraqi government or the regional government of Kurdistan, but is the responsibility of the federal parliament and it is the parliament that will decide,” said Hassan Torman, vice-president of the Turkmen al-Aadala party.

If the amendments go to a universal vote, an absolute majority of Iraq’s electors must back them for the measures to pass.

However, if two-third majorities reject the changes in at least three of Iraq’s 18 provinces, they will fail, a clause which gives the autonomous Kurdish region and its three provinces an effective veto over any amendments.

And the Kurds, whose peshmerga forces already have a heavy presence in Kirkuk alongside the Iraqi army, are insisting the provincial referendum should still go ahead.

“Article 140 is constitutional and the Iraqi government is obliged to implement it,” said Sherzad Adil, a senior Kurdish member of the provincial assembly.

“The delay in implementing it is the fault of the governments that followed the former regime and we hope the problems will be solved before the next (general) election” in January, he said.

The Arab and Turkmen-backed amendments will retain references to “normalization” of Kirkuk, a term meaning the resettlement of Kurds expelled from their homes by executed former dictator Saddam Hussein in a campaign of Arabisation.

“We must continue to compensate those who were displaced” by the Arabisation policies on humanitarian grounds, said Mohammed Khalil al-Juburi, head of the provincial council’s Arab bloc.

Arabs and Turkmen nevertheless say that Kurdish population figures have been boosted by many moving to the province in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion that overthrew Saddam.

Peshmerga have expanded their areas of control in Iraq. The region’s three provinces comprise around 40,000 square kilometers, but peshmerga have advanced into an additional 35,000 square kilometers, today’s disputed areas, and have major presences in Kirkuk, Nineveh and Diyala provinces.

In a visit to the autonomous region on August 2, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said that Article 140 was “constitutional” but added that “the ultimate goal is to find a solution that preserves the various components of Iraqi society… in the framework of the Iraqi state.”

At stake is control over the estimated 7.9 billion barrels of reserves in the massive Kirkuk oil field, the third biggest deposit in Iraq which overall has the world’s third largest reserves.

Source :Hurriyet Daily
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=turkmen-join-arabs-to-stop-referendum-in-kirkuk-2009-08-17