In six previous articles, entitled “William Guthrie´s Turcomania: the Correct Name for Inexistent Kurdistan” ), “Jews and Turkmen Can Prosper Again in Tuz Khurmatu – With Turkey Annexing North Iraq” ), “Iraq´s Turkmenia to Merge with Turkey: Primary Concern of All Turks and Muslims” ), “Tombstone on Fake Kurdistan: Turkmen Political and Religious Movements in Iraq” ), “Turkmen Culture and Literature in Northern Iraq – True Identity vs. Fake Kurdish Propaganda” ) and “Protect Iraq´s Turkmen Cultural Heritage from Barbaric “Kurdish” Terrorists” ), I published the first six chapters (and parts of the lengthy seventh chapter) of an insightful book published by Mofak Salman Kerkuklu, one of the Turkmen foremost intellectuals, on “The Turkmen City of Tuz Khormatu”.

As the book bears witness to the Turkmen identity of the Northern Iraqi city, it consists in an excellent refutation of disastrous plans that provide for the formation of a fake state ´Kurdistan´ which will plunge into strife and disaster the subjugated non-Kurdish nations and ethno-religious groups, either those identified as unrelated (Turkmen, Aramaean, Jewish) or those labeled “Kurds” (Zaza, Sorani, Yazidi, Ahl-e Haq, Feyli, etc.).
In the present article, I publish further parts of the vast seventh chapter, which cover the various – all colonial – phases of Modern History of Iraq with focus on Tuz Khormatu. Through an overview of Mesopotamia´s Modern History, one understands that all the problems of the various local peoples and ethno-religious groups derived from the evil colonial plans of the Apostate Freemasonic Lodge that totally controls the political establishments of England and France.

What the Pseudo-Kurdish Terrorists Talabani and Barzani Fail to Understand

The Anti-Ottoman, Anti-Turkish and Anti-Muslim, Anti-Christian and Anti-Aramaean, Anti-Persian and Anti-Oriental racism, hysteria and evilness of the tyrannical, murderous and inhuman regimes of Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau have triggered all the problems and all the disasters that have befallen on the historical peoples of the vast colonized periphery of the Ottoman Empire.

In their evil plans, the colonial gangsters involved the most backward and the most ignorant tribal rulers
on whom they projected their fallacious version of History, whom they villainously and disproportionately flattered in order to turn them from unimportant mountain chieftains of non-value to significant and ludicrous clowns – pawns of their agenda (that the colonial gangsters do not however dare reveal to their puppets – slaves), with whom they planned to work, promoting disloyalty and immorality, at the detriment of the normal and rightful political authorities (the Ottoman and the Persian Empires), and at the prejudice of the outright majority of the local nations and ethno-religious groups, to whom they made favors and promises in order to shamefully utilize them and criminally instrumentalize them for their hidden agenda´s materialization, and for whom they have already reserved an abominable end full of disgrace, treachery and blood, as all the English colonials´ puppets – rulers have been killed by the same way, namely rulers´ subordinates who were also employed by the colonials as agents against their local masters.

In fact, the paranoid US – EU decision to consider terrorist groups as possible interlocutors and to unwisely demonstrate predilection to unrepresentative political groups that have provenly terrorized other nations and ethno-religious groups risks triggering mass extermination of the Aramaeans, the Turkmen and others, and fomenting an incredible strife among the different peoples whom the English colonial propaganda and the criminal but idiotic chieftains Talabani and Barzani label as “Kurds”. On this issue, I will however dedicate further articles.

Here suffice it to state that the Turkmen historicity of many lands falsely claimed as ´Kurdish´ will be one of the obstacles to the evil plans of the Apostate Freemasonic Lodge to set up a bogus-state called Kurdistan that will be the Hell-on-Earth.

The Turkmen City of Tuz Khormatu

By Mofak Salman Kerkuklu

Turkmen Under the British Occupation

A key to understanding why the maintenance of Iraq’s territorial integrity is viewed by many as critical is knowledge of the country’s enormous ethnic and religious diversity, the aspirations of these groups and the problems they now face. One of these ethno‐linguistic groups is the Turkmen, who have made a major effort to define themselves, both internally and to the world community. Their real population has always been suppressed by the authorities in Iraq for political reasons and is officially estimated at 2%, whereas in reality their number should be put between 2.5 and 3 million, i.e., 12% of the Iraqi population. The Turkmen of Iraq settled in Turkmeneli. Over the centuries, Turkmen played a constructive role in Iraq, either by defending the foreign invaders or by bringing civilisation. Their monuments and architectural remains exist all over Iraq. They lived in harmony with all ethnic groups around them. They lived with justice and tolerance.

The Turkmen are a Turkic group with a unique heritage and culture, as well as linguistic, historical and cultural links with the surrounding Turkic groups, such as those in Turkey and Azerbaijan. Their spoken language is closer to Azeri but their official written language is like the Turkish spoken in present‐day Turkey. The Turkmen of Iraq settled in Turkmeneli (Turkmen land) in three successive and constant migrations from Central Asia, and increased their numbers; this enabled them to establish six states in Iraq:

1. The Seljuks,

2. The Atabegs,

3. The Ilkhanids,

4. The Jalairids,

5. The Kara Koyunlu (Black Sheep),

6. The Ak Koynlu (White Sheep).

The Ak Koynlu became the last Turkmen state, in the sixteenth century. After that, the Safawids and the Ottomans ruled them.

Turkmen during the time of the Monarchy

For decades, since the creation of the Iraqi State in 1921, the Turkmen of Iraq and their plight have been completely ignored by the international community: they have been the least listened to outside Iraq and the least defended by their own government. Indeed, for decades, the Turkmen have been denied their basic human rights in Iraq, and have faced total indifference from the international community.

The disregard of the Turkmen´s historical role and achievements in Iraq, the denial of their true representation as the third largest ethnic group and, consequently, their marginalisation in Iraq have been initiated by the British colonial authorities at the end of World War One in 1918, for geopolitical and economical reasons only. This was meant to facilitate the separation of the Mosul Vilayat ´Mosul Province´ (now representing five Iraqi provinces: Mosul, Kirkuk, Erbil, Duhok and Suleymaniyah) from the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), in order to control the huge oil reserves of Kirkuk, which was then inhabited mainly by the Turkmen, as it had been for centuries.

During the 1920 uprising against the British occupation of Iraq, several Turkmen leaders appeared in the political arena in Tuz Khormatu. They have successfully participated in the uprising against the British occupation. These include Ali Efendi Mullah Wali, Najem Mohammed Chayir, Sayid Mohamed Sayid Ali, Khurshid Bakir Agha, Qanber Hussein Agha, Wahab Rustum Agha, Ali Mullah Safer, Jalal Rashid Efendi, Kasim Mohammed Suleyman, Moussa Qanber Agha, Hassan Maruf, Mullah Mehdi Khalil, Fadhil Mullah Mustafa, Rashid Khalifa Aldaqooqi and Abbass Kahya. Also, during the uprising in Tuz Khormatu, Mohammed Al‐Ferhan Albayeti and the chief of the Bayat Tribe Faris Beg provided the demonstrators with logistical support and arms.[1]

However, after the British invasion of Iraq in 1918, the Turkmen began to experience a different situation. The Turkmen were branded unjustly as loyal to Turkey: they were removed from the administration, pushed into isolation and ignored. Then, their fundamental human rights in culture and education were violated by the closure of their schools between 1933 and 1937.

Under the constitution, drawn up in 1932, the Kurds and the Turkmen had the right to use their own languages in schools and government offices and to have their own language press. With the Arabs, the Kurds were recognised in the first constitution of monarchical Iraq as one of the three main component groups of the Iraqi nation. However, constitutional rights were acknowledged to minorities in Iraq and the Royal Constitution of 21st March 1925 and the Article 16: “As determined by a general programme prescribed by law, each of the minorities originating from various nations has the right to set up schools where education is provided in the language used by that minority and is entitled to be in charge of these schools”. It was stated in the Royal Constitution, which was valid until 1958, that the Iraqi State consisted of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other minorities.
Moreover, according to Article 14 of the same constitution, Turkmen, like other minorities, were also entitled to receive an education in their own language and to be in charge of their own educational institutions. In fact, until the proclamation of the republic, various constitutional amendments did not cause ethnic or political discrimination. However, in 1933, the final version of Article 17 of the constitution declared Arabic as the official language, with legally defined exceptions. Legislation number 74, published in 1931, and entitled Native Languages had clearly stipulated these exceptions. This law permitted all judicial processes to be conducted in the Turkmen language and primary school education to be in the Turkish language in all areas where Turkmen lived, foremost among these being Kirkuk and Erbil, and these rights were under constitutional guarantee. However, in 1936, after the resignation of Hikmat Suleiman, the brother of Sadrazam (Chief Minister) Mahmud Shavket Pasha, from the post of Prime Minister, to which he was appointed two years before, the new military regime began a campaign of taking back the rights given by the constitution. Thus, the Turkmen of Iraq lost the right to be educated in their native tongue. Under the Iraqi constitution of 1925, both Turkmen and Kurds had the right to use their own languages in schools, government offices and press.

By 1972, the Iraqi government prohibited both the study of the Turkmen language and Turkmen media and in 1973, any reference to the Turkmen was omitted from the provisional constitution. During the 1980s, the regime, the Ba´ath Party, prohibited even public use of the Turkmen language and the constitution of 1990 only states that the ´people of Iraq´ consist of ´Arabs and Kurds´.

However, one of the historical tragedies carried out against the Turkmen in Tuz Khormatu during the Monarchy was the uprising ´Intifada´ of June 6, 1954. The uprising commenced when the people of the district and the adjacent villages were frustrated by the election games practiced by the Iraqi government, which was assigning its supporters in the parliaments as representatives for the different constituencies. The Turkmen residents of Tuz Khormatu decided to show their unity and try to prevent possible the rigging of the election results. Therefore, they demanded free and integral elections, away from the governments´ influences and government candidates.[2]

In the elections held in June 1954, there were two candidates, Mr Jihad Al Wandawi and Mr Zaynal Abdeen Al Hajj Qanber Agha, who were accepted by the Tuz Khormatu people to represent them in the Parliament. The Election centres in the constituency were held in the Employees´ Club and the Tuz Khormatu elementary school.

The voting began at six o´clock in the morning and after a few hours, it was evident to the people that the government was supporting and proffering Mr Jihad Al Wandawi, thus ignoring the principle of neutrality and implementing the orders of the central powers in Baghdad. The supporters of Mr Zaynal Abdin Al Hajj Qanber Agha objected and protested to the authorities that there were people being brought in to vote for Mr Jihad Al Wandawi more than once. The people of Tuz Khormatu objected in writing to the District Commissioner, demanding that he investigate the issue. The Commissioner issued an order to arrest the campaign manager of the Turkmen candidate, Haji Mubarak Hassan.[3] The people realised that things were going from bad to worse and in their fury they attacked the election centres and destroyed the ballot boxes.[4]

People noticed that in the first polling centre, in the Employees´ Club, there were armed forces trying to intimidate the crowds and prevent them from advancing but that was of no use, for the crowds continued marching. The unarmed protesters started to stone the armed troops in the Club, thus forcing the troops to seek shelter in nearby gardens and the clashes continued between the people and the outsiders, who were totally committed to making the government´s candidate win the elections. The troops started shooting at the protesters and killed Suleiman Ali, one of the original inhabitants of Tuz Khormatu. This was clear evidence for the Turkmen of the denial that was being forged.

The period of monarchy, from 1932 to 1958, saw the removal of Turkmen from government posts and their deportation to Arab areas. The suppression of the Turkmen peaked in 1946, when they were subjected to what is historically known as the Gawer Baghi massacre when the police opened fire on unarmed protesters among the Iraqi oil workers in Kirkuk. Since then, and despite the formal independence of Iraq from Great Britain and the end of the British mandate in 1932, successive Iraqi governments have applied the same policies of marginalisation and discrimination towards the Turkmen as those that were initiated and applied by the British in 1918 and for the same geopolitical and economical reasons!

The Abdul Karim Qasim Period (1958–1963)

The military coup of 1958 that toppled the monarchy first brought rays of hope for the Turkmen when they heard radio announcements by coup leader General Abdul Kerim Qasim and his deputy General Abdul Salam Arif that Iraq was made up of three main ethnic groups and Turkmen were one of them. Turkmen interpreted these statements as the end of the suppression.

However, happy days did not last long. After the coup of 1958, General Abdul Kerim Qasim declared an amnesty and, because of this, a Kurdish rebel leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani returned from the Soviet Union and started negotiating for a Kurdish autonomous region. The situation of the Turkmen has deteriorated dramatically and drastically because of the hegemonic ambitions of Kurdish rebel leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani and his plans for an independent Kurdish state in the north of Iraq, for which the oil wealth of Kirkuk was not only a necessity but also the main motivation. The existence of Turkmen in the north of Iraq, side‐by‐side with the Kurds, and the Turkmen presence in great numbers in Kirkuk, where for centuries, they represented the majority, were seen and felt by Mullah Mustafa Barzani as obstacles to the realisation of his dreams for an independent Kurdish state and the control of Kirkuk’s oil wealth.

During the time of General Abdul Karim Qasim, the Turkmen suffered marginalisation and discrimination from both the Kurds and the Iraqi communists who dominated the regime in Iraq. They faced internal deportation, exile, arbitrary arrest and detention, confiscation of properties and agricultural land and worst of all, the massacre of 120 of their intellectuals and community leaders on the eve of the first anniversary of the revolution on 14th July 1959 by Kurdish rebel leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani and his Kurdish followers allied to the Iraqi communists. Kirkuk was put under curfew and its population slaughtered by Communists and Kurds. The streets of Kirkuk were filled with blood and witnessed one of its more brutal moments in history. The Turkmen in Kirkuk were attacked under the false pretext that they helped the Mosul resistance against the central government. The Kirkuk massacre was totally disregarded by the world and the whole of humanity ignored it.

It was only after this massacre that the Communist Kurds became aggressive enough to negotiate for inclusion of Kirkuk in their autonomous region. During this period (1958–1963), a mass migration of the Kurds, from their villages and towns in the north‐east of Iraq to the Turkmen region and especially to the cities of Kirkuk and Tuz Khormatu, were organised and implemented in order to increase Kurdish presence in Kirkuk and alter the demography of this large Turkmen city.

Notes

1 Brief Turkmen History Mowjez Tarih Al-Turkmen, by Shakir Sabri Alzabit, published by Matbaat al-almaarif, part one, pages 137–138, Baghdad, 1960

2 Ersad Hurmuzli, Hakikat al-Wojood al-Turkmenifi al_Iraq, (The existence of the Turkmen in Iraq), page 215, first edition, boyut.Tan.Mat, Ankara, 2005.

3 Ersad Hurmuzli, Hakikat al-Wojood al-Turkmenifi al_Iraq, (The existence of the Turkmen in Iraq), page 217, first edition, boyut. Tan.Mat, Ankara, 2005

4 Ersad Hurmuzli, Hakikat al-Wojood al-Turkmenifi al_Iraq, (The existence of the Turkmen in Iraq), page 216, first edition, boyut. Tan.Mat, Ankara, 2005

Note

Picture: Tuz Khurmatu Castle in 1918, at the beginning of the calamitous colonial period that has not yet ended.