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 »
Iraqi Turkmen Solidarity Meeting in Ankara
“ITF Turkey Representative, the distinguished Dr. Hicran Kazancı brings the Turkmen personalities living in Turkey under a single roof titled “Turkmen Solidarity Meeting”, shares the projects under the management of his representation, as well as new strategies and claims to be open to any and all forms of criticism. ”
ITF Turkey Representative, the distinguished Dr. Hicran Kazancı brings the Turkmen personalities living in Turkey under a single roof titled “Turkmen Solidarity Meeting”, shares the projects under the management of his representation, as well as new strategies and claims to be open to any and all forms of criticism. Within the scope of this framework, Dr. Kazancı is holds the fourth in a series of Turkmen Solidarity Meetings in the Representation building on 28.01.2010. 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 »
Iraqi Turkmen Front EU Representative attended the Delegation for relations with Iraq Meeting at the European Parliament
ITF EU Representative Dr. Hassan Aydinli attended the 27 January 2011 Delegation for relations with Iraq Meeting at the EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT in Brussels.
MEP Struan STEVENSON, Chair of D-IQ started the meeting by saying that Dr. Jafar Hassan, Minister of Planning and International Cooperation of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, who had been invited to this meeting – to share his views on the relations between Iraq and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan as well as on a larger perspective involving ongoing issues in the Middle East – was unable to attend as his flight had been cancelled because of the bad weather conditions in the U.S. Read the rest of this entry »
Head of ITF Sadettin Ergeç in Çankaya Palace
The President of the Republic of Turkey Abdullah Gül received Head of Iraqi Turkmen Front Sadettin Ergeç and Iraqi Turkmen Front Turkey Representative Hicran Kazancı in Çankaya Palace.
The President of the Republic of Turkey Abdullah Gül received Head of Iraqi Turkmen Front Sadettin Ergeç and Iraqi Turkmen Front Turkey Representative Hicran Kazancı in Çankaya Palace. 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 »
Turkey’s Vakıfbank to open a branch in Iraq’s Arbil
Turkish lender Vakıfbank is set to open a branch in the Iraqi city of Arbil by the end of the year.
Süleyman Kalkan, director-general of Vakıfbank, told reporters during a press conference Friday, “We applied to the central government of Iraq to open a Vakıfbank branch in Arbil. As we have already received prior approval, we are planning to open the Arbil branch by the end of the year.” Read the rest of this entry »
Davutoglu urges Iraq’s Turkmen lawmakers to act in unison
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu got together with Iraq’s Turkmen lawmakers at an exclusive fast breaking dinner in Ankara on Saturday, where recent political developments in Iraq were discussed.
Davutoglu urged Turkmen lawmakers in the Iraqi National Parliament to let aside partisan differences and act in unison in issues concerning the Turkmen population of Iraq, calling on them to form a Turkmen group in the parliament. Davutoglu emphasized that Turkey attached importance to unity among ethnic groups in Iraq. 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 »