Tag: Arabs

  • Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?

    Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?

    WISPS OF THE PAST Beyond Istanbul’s landmarks, a legacy of cosmopolitan interchange of goods and ideas.

    By ANTHONY SHADID

    Published: May 28, 2011

    GAZIANTEP, Turkey

    LESS than a mile from the Syrian frontier, in the land of Kemal Ataturk, Ahmed Sheikh Said defies the identities that borders inspire.

    Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis
    Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis

    Mr. Said was born in the Syrian town of Azaz and raised across a line on the map in Kilis, Turkey. A grocer, he speaks Turkish like a native to his customers, while holding an ear open to the Arabic telecasts of Al Jazeera playing in his store. His wife and his mother are Turkish, but Arab blood runs through his veins, he says, “till the end of time.”

    “The bread of Azaz comes from Kilis, and the bread of Kilis comes from Azaz,” said Mr. Said, whose shop sits just off a road that once carried the business of the far-flung Ottoman Empire and now marks Turkey’s limits. “We’re the same. We’re brothers. What really divides us?”

    As the Arab world beyond the border struggles with the inspirations and traumas of its revolution — a new notion of citizenship colliding with the smaller claims of piety, sect and clan — something else is percolating along the old routes of that empire, which spanned three continents and lasted six centuries before Ataturk brought it to an end in 1923 with self-conscious revolutionary zeal.

    It is probably too early to define identities emerging in those locales. But something bigger than its parts is at work along imperial connections that were bent but never broken by decades of colonialism and the cold war. The links are the stuff of land, culture, history, architecture, memory and imagination that remains the realm of scholarship and daily lives but often eludes the notice of a journalism marching to the cadence of conflict.

    Even amid the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in directions that call into question more parochial notions. The undertow intersects with the Arab revolution’s search for a new sense of self; it also builds on economic forces now reconnecting an older imperium, as well as on Turkey’s new dynamism and on efforts to bring reality to what has long been nostalgia.

    Its echoes are heard in the borderlands like Gaziantep, near Mr. Said’s shop, where businessman can haggle in a patois of English, Turkish, Arabic and even Kurdish. It is seen in the blurring of arbitrary lines where the Semitic script of Arabic and Kurdish tangles with the Latin script of Turkish across the borders with Syria and Iraq. It is noticed along the frontiers where Arab and Turkish nationalism, pan-Islamism and a host of secular ideologies never seemed to quite capture the ambitions or demarcate the environments of the diverse peoples who live there.

    “The normalization of history,” proclaims the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has tried to reintegrate the region by lifting visa requirements and promoting a Middle Eastern trade zone, as it deploys its businessmen along the old routes and exports Turkey’s pop culture to an eager audience.

    “None of the borders of Turkey are natural,” he went on. “Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities. That’s the way it’s been for centuries.”

    There is admittedly a hint of romanticism in it all. The Arab world may in fact be bracing for years of sectarian and internecine strife in places like Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. And in seeking to be a more prominent, and steadying, influence, Turkey’s ambitions may well be greater than its means. Still, economic realities are already restoring old trajectories that joined the Kurdish regions of Turkey and Iraq, tied Batumi in Georgia to Trabzon in Turkey, and knit Aleppo into an axis of cities — Mosul, Diyarbakir, Gaziantep and Iskenderun — in which Damascus, the leading but distant Arab metropole, was an afterthought.

    THE DRAWING OF 20TH-CENTURY BORDERS rendered traumas large and small. Sectarian and ethnic cleansing after World War I rid Turkey and Greece of much of their diversity. The horrors of nationalism and the Holocaust made Salonica, a celebrated melting pot, unrecognizable in its modern incarnation. Even history’s footnotes were rewritten.

    One example is Marjayoun, my family’s ancestral hometown in Lebanon, nestled near the Israeli and Syrian borders in the heart of the old Ottoman realm, and little more than an afterthought on maps these days.

    No one in Marjayoun would necessarily pine for the days of the Ottoman rulers. Massacres occurred, and Jews and Christians faced discrimination in taxes and commerce. There was no such thing as equality. To this day, the darkest moments of Marjayoun’s history remain those last breaths of the empire — the seferberlik. It was the Ottoman name for the draft, but it came to represent the famine, starvation and death that World War I brought to the town, when the famished searched the manure of animals to find an undigested morsel of grain.

    Yet more than a few in Marjayoun today might express a nostalgia for the time and place the Ottoman Empire represented, when Marjayoun’s traders ventured to Arish on the coast of the Sinai Peninsula and down the Nile to Sudan, by way of Palestine. The town was a way station on the route from the breadbasket of the Houran in southern Syria to Acre, the Levant’s greatest port on the coast of Palestine. Beirut was an afterthought. Marjayoun’s traders plied the steppe of the Houran, its gentry owned land in the Hula Valley, and its educated ventured to Haifa and Jerusalem to make their reputations.

    World War I and the borders that followed augured the demise of this style of life, and not just in Marjayoun. The ideologies that gained prevalence in the town then were about contesting those frontiers — Arab nationalism, pan-Syrian nationalism and Communism, which itself was imagining a broader community. These movements failed as more borders were drawn in wars with Israel in 1948 and 1967. And with those lines on the map came a smaller sense of self. By the time Lebanon’s 15-year civil war began in 1975, ideologies had given way to identities, and most people in Marjayoun identified themselves simply as Christian, or perhaps Greek Orthodox, too unique to survive as a community.

    A town of thousands is today a town of hundreds, strewn with the abandoned villas of another age. Hajar bala bashar, a friend once told me. “Stones without people.”

    “A RECREATION OF THE HISTORIC AND NATURAL ENVIRONMENT” is how Mr. Davutoglu describes his vision for the region. And indeed, that vision, which is effectively government policy, has touched in a nerve in Turkey, a country with its own unresolved questions of identity.

    Just as Arab nationalism still runs run deep, with the fate of Palestine its axis, so does Turkish nationalism, which includes a sense that the country deserves a role in the region, and beyond that at least echoes of its Ottoman age. The more sophisticated Turks dismiss charges of a new rationale for Turkish imperialism and call the goal instead a peaceful partnership that might look like the free-trade zone that presaged the European Union after World War II.

    “It’s been almost 100 years that we’ve been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultural and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we’re lifting national boundaries,” said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s staff. “Turkey is challenging the traditional understanding of policy in the Middle East in place since the 20th century.”

    More than the talk of a salon, the vision comes at an obvious turning point in the Middle East. Though dealt setbacks by the Arab revolution — investments have been lost in Libya and the prospect of chaos stalks Syria — Turkey has stuck to its vision of an integrated region. A railway line linking Turkey, Syria and Iraq reopened last year; a fast train is to operate between Gaziantep and Aleppo. The resources of northern Iraq are strategic for Turkey’s plans to diversify its energy sources and to feed a pipeline from Turkey to central Europe. A common free-trade area has already been agreed upon by Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon.

    Turkish television series are dubbed into Syrian Arabic, and its stars’ posters sell by the tens of thousands in Iraq. In Baghdad, portraits of one famous actor are digitally altered to show him in traditional Kurdish or Arab dress.

    Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts’ success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands of justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism. It echoes even in Turkey, where religious and national divides are increasingly blurred. Selcuk Sirin, a professor at New York University who has done extensive polling in Turkey, especially among youth, calls this the emergence of “hybrid identities.”

    “Young people don’t buy into this idea of a clash, and they don’t buy into this idea of fixed identity,” he said. “They know how to negotiate these so-called polar opposites, and they’re looking for something new.”

    THERE WAS A MOVIE more than a decade ago in Turkey called “Propaganda,” a dark comedy about the border drawn between Syria and Turkey, dividing family from family. It was inspired by the reality of relatives heading to the fence there on Muslim holidays — Bayram in Turkish, Id in Arabic — and throwing gifts to the other side.

    These days, with the border effectively open, Syrians fill the hotels on weekends in Gaziantep, which is famous for its pistachios. Some merchants here talk about their trade growing tenfold since visa requirements were lifted. Debates rage over whether the kebab of Gaziantep is better than the kibbe in Aleppo.

    Turks may still call a mess “Arab hair.” But they also judge a gift by the standards of “apricots in Damascus.” And the old notions of Ottoman tyranny (from the Arab point of view) and Arab betrayal in World War I (as Turks see it) have given way somewhat to the promise of profit in a market still booming even amid the uprising across the border.

    Hakan Cinkilic, foreign trade manager of a plastics company called Sun Pet, is reaping the benefits. Nearly 80 percent of its products go to Iraq, and the company set up a factory in Jordan last year. Its exports have more than doubled since 2008. This year he has already traveled to Libya, the United States, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

    As he spoke, his cellphone rang. It was a customer in Kirkuk, Iraq, who spoke to him in Turkish. A few minutes later, a businessman called from the West Bank. The conversation unfolded in English, punctuated by Arabic expressions inflected by the vowels of his native tongue. You wouldn’t call him neo-Ottoman, given the term’s suggestion of a resurgent imperialism. He’s not really Levantine, an identity whose borders hug the Mediterranean coast. He seemed post-Ottoman, reinterpreting the past.

    “It’s natural,” he said simply.

    via Can Turkey Unify the Arabs? – NYTimes.com.

  • Turkey wrong model for Arabs seeking freedom

    Turkey wrong model for Arabs seeking freedom

    erdogan ahmedinecadSince the very beginning of the Arab uprisings, over and over again we’ve been hearing politicians, commentators – almost everyone with an opinion – express the ardent hope that new Arab governments would emulate “the Turkish model,” a supposed moderate Islamic democracy.

    Well, think again. Lift the covers off this mythical wonderland, and you’ll find a cesspool, a government showing utter contempt for its own people by jailing scores of reporters, blocking thousands of websites, severely punishing anyone who dares utter a word of criticism.

    Aren’t those the very same proclivities that drove so many angry Arabs into the street?

    Guess which nation has jailed more reporters than any other. China? Iran? No, it’s Turkey. The Turkish media say 68 are in prison right now – double the number last reported in either China or Iran. And some are jailed for more than just a few days or weeks.

    The International Press Institute noted that two newspaper reporters were recently sentenced to 138 and 166 years each. Another is battling 150 separate court cases. Two others, on trial now, face up to 3,000 years in prison. A common charge is “insulting the president of the republic.” If that were a legal charge in any actual democracy, the nation’s entire press corps would be in jail.

    The nation’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, defends his treatment of the news media, averring last month that all those reporters are in trouble because of their “subversive activities.” None of them, he added “are being detained because of their activities as a journalist.” That’s utter nonsense.

    Erdogan was referring indirectly to the so-called Ergenekon plot, a chimerical scheme to cause chaos that is intended to prompt the military to take control and install a fully secular government again.

    In 2007, authorities found 27 hand grenades in the attic of an Istanbul slum home. From that, the government spun a rich web of conspiracy and intrigue that has allowed authorities to arrest hundreds of people, reporters and others, on charges of “subversive activities.” And yet, four years later we have seen no significant public manifestation of this so-called plot.

    I am hardly the only one who views this as a weak pretext for eliminating freedom of the press and the right to free expression. National security “should not be used as a ground to curb media freedom,” said Dunja Mijatovic, press-freedom officer for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which published a study this spring of Turkey’s assault on the press. She and others chastised Turkey for arresting reporters for simply reporting on the so-called Ergenekon plot.

    In Turkey, “writing about sensitive issues, including issues of terrorism or anti-government activities, is often considered as supporting those issues,” her office said.

    I’ve worked in dozens of authoritarian states that have little tolerance for the news media. But I have never before seen such a pervasive, indiscriminate assault on the media. “More than 2,000 journalists are being prosecuted, and investigations have been launched against 4,000 journalists,” the Turkish Policy Center in Washington reported.

    The problem has grown so serious that, in April, Reporters Without Borders staged a conference in Istanbul and said “it’s worrying to note that all journalists are under threat.”

    You expect this sort of behavior from elected government leaders who are not planning to leave office when their time is up. But Erdogan might have another motivation, too. Modern Turkey was founded as a fiercely secular state, and Erdogan is trying to give it a stronger Islamic flavor. Many Turks believe, as former Justice Minister Aysel Celikel once said, that the Ergenekon investigation “is being used as a tool to sweep across civil society and cleanse Turkey of all secular opponents.”

    To that end, the government also blocks thousands of websites it considers insulting, offensive or otherwise uncomplimentary to itself. Human Rights Watch says Turkey was blocking 8,170 sites when it last checked in March. Among them were YouTube and some Google services. As many as 100,000 Turks protested this in nationwide rallies earlier this month.

    Most people around the world know nothing of this, and the nation’s leaders count on that. President Abdullah Gul gave a speech in Indonesia last month in which he called his country a “shining” example for the Arab world, “a strong source of inspiration to the people in the region.

    “Just being us,” he boasted, “we serve as a catalyst for reform.”

    Weeks earlier, a court sentenced Turkish journalist Cem Buyukcakir to an 11-month jail term, suspended – for “insulting President Gul.”

    © 2011 Joel Brinkley

    Joel Brinkley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, is the author of “Cambodia’s Curse: The Modern History of a Troubled Land.” Brinkley will speak at 5:30 p.m., Thursday at the World Affairs Council of Northern California, 312 Sutter St., San Francisco. To register, go to www.itsyourworld.org/assnfe/ev.asp?ID=2964&SnID=585865198. E-mail him at brinkley@foreign-matters.com. Contact The Chronicle at sfgate.com/chronicle/submission/#1.

    This article appeared on page F – 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

    via Turkey wrong model for Arabs seeking freedom.

  • Security challenges, solutions for Turkey and the Arab world

    Security challenges, solutions for Turkey and the Arab world

    LAHCEN HADDAD

    Major security concerns for the greater Middle East have to do with Iran’s nuclear program, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its blockade of Gaza, separatism, religious extremism and water issues. Those woes were the main focus of a recent forum of liberal Arab-Turkish dialogue organized by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in Istanbul.

    The challenge with regard to Iran is how to engage the country in such a way as to be able to wean it away from nuclear armament into a constructive engagement in regional stability. The doctrine in this regard should be to respect Iran’s political choices while calling on it to assume its responsibility as a player in the stability of the region. Rather than isolating Iran, engaging it at different levels through both political dialogue and civic interaction among different advocacy groups and civil society organizations could be more instrumental in bringing to the forth its responsibility as a regional player.

    Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and its blockade of Gaza has now become an even greater source of instability in the region. Being moderate and more or less neutral, liberals in the region could play an important role in monitoring human rights issues in the occupied territories, advocating for the lifting of the Gaza blockade and the cessation of settlements, and working with civil society organizations on both sides to deal with Palestinian livelihood issues, as a peace process is hopefully being discussed – should Israel care to reach one – in application of the different U.N. resolutions on the issue.

    Separatism is pervasive in the region: Turkey, Iraq, Southern Sudan, Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Southern Morocco and Palestine – all of these regions know some of form of ethnically – or religiously-based form of dissidence, generally supported by outside forces or groups. The main concern here is how to contain separatism in those places so that it does not destabilize those countries and the whole region. Any approach to the issue of separatism should be built around advocating for minority rights without at the same time disrupting the territorial integrity of the concerned countries. Promoting freedom, equality, rule of law and democracy all over the region on the one hand and investing resources in poverty alleviation programs in conflict-ridden areas can be effective in mitigating instability and conflict drivers and setting up socio-political contexts for peaceful and democratic resolutions of conflicts and differences.

    Religious extremism (not only Islamic) poses a serious threat to the whole region. How to curb it so that it does not destabilize countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sahel-adjacent countries, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel and Gulf countries will prove to be a formidable challenge if no serious cooperation between these countries is set up and sustained. In the meantime, countries need to invest in promoting more liberal forms of Islam that is tolerant and respectful of rights and infusing human rights and universal values into the educational systems of almost all the countries of the region.

    Last but not least, water shortage and desertification are and could be sources of instability in so many countries in the region. Water issues between Iraq and Syria on the one hand and Turkey on the other could resurface any time and mar the improving relations (at least between Syria and Turkey). Yemen is already a water-stressed country and a good percentage of its internal conflicts are water-related. Egypt and Sudan could go to war with Africa’s Great Lakes countries should the latter go ahead with their plan to build reservoirs at the upper Nile levels. Desertification is uprooting whole communities in the Sahara and Sahel making them easy targets for al-Qaeda, narcotics and human traffickers’ recruiting efforts. Setting up a regional mechanism to manage water, energy and environmental issues and promote scientific and other solutions is one way to mitigate the effect of water shortage and desertification on the region’s stability.

    Together, Turkey and the Arab countries are in a good position nowadays to work toward durable solutions for some of the security issues the region is facing. The rediscovery of shared history and culture, the existence of enough energy resources, financial assets and emergent human capital in the region, and the emergence of civil society and media organizations are opportunities they could tap into to create a base for positive change and hope for a prosperous and peaceful Middle East and North Africa region.

    Aricle first published at hurriyet news

    * Lahcen Haddad is a strategic studies expert and professor at Mohamed V University in Rabat, Morocco.

  • The reality of the Kurdish violence in Kirkuk

    The reality of the Kurdish violence in Kirkuk

    Mofak Salman Kerkuklu

    ITF Turkmen in Kirkuk after being attacked by the Kurds

    In the middle of August 2008. Iraq’s parliament reached an agreement on the Provincial Council Election Law, particularly with regard to Paragraph 24 of the law, which deals with the election mechanism in the Kirkuk Governorate. The postponement of the elections and adaptation of the division of Kirkuk to the three constituencies that include the proportion of 32 % for Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen and 4% for Assyrians.

    Turkmen, Arab and Assyrians proposed equal distribution of provincial council seats in the Kirkuk region – which is outside the Kurdish territory. This was vetoed by President Jalal Talabani and his deputy, Adel Abdul Mahdi. 

    Before the voting, the Kurds rejected secret ballot whereas the opposition had requested a secret ballot and the members of the Iraqi parliament voted open and secret voting. The majority of members have decided for secret voting and the deputy parliamentary speaker Khalid al-Attiyah, a Shiite, said the secret ballot was unconstitutional and accused the lawmakers of “arm-twisting.”

    On the 22nd of August 2008, decision was made by 127 Iraqi members of parliament they voted in favour of the Provincial Council Election Law, particularly with regard to Paragraph 24 of the law, which deals with the election mechanism in the Kirkuk Governorate. The distribution of power that include the proportion of 32 % for Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen and 4% for Assyrians. 

    The security of the town shall be controlled by the central government rather than the current military forces that are stationed in the town. The security forces that are linked to the political parties have to leave. 

    The bill was approved by 127 out of 140 deputies that attended the meeting and 10 of those members decided not to vote. Two of them decided to vote against and one MP submitted a blank ballot paper but the Iraq’s parliament still passed the law. The Kurds, along with the two deputy parliamentary speakers, walked out of the chamber after lawmakers decided to hold a secret ballot on a power-sharing item in the law for the disputed, oil-rich city of Kirkuk. This was vetoed by President Jalal Talabani and his deputy, Adel Abdul Mahdi. 

    On the 27th of July 2008 the secret police that are linked to both Kurdish parties distributed leaflets informing the people of Kirkuk, especially the Turkmen to participate in a protest that had been organised by the Kurds against the adoption of the law of elections for provincial assemblies causing a postponement of elections in the city for an indefinite period. Also the Kurdish police whom accompanied the Kurdish Asayish informed the Turkmen shop owners to close their shops and anyone who opened his shop would be subjected to punishment and his shop will be ransacked. The Kurdish Asayish separated roamers that all the governmental buildings would be close and the Kurdish directors in Kirkuk informed the Turkmen employees not to attend to work and anyone failing to do so he/she will be punished and his wages will be cut. 

    As the result of this, the Turkmen population in the Kirkuk was extremely worried and concerned as this event reminded the Turkmen of the Kurdish massacre of the Turkmen in 1959, when Turkmen were burned, killed,/executed. Some were attached to ropes and pulled behind cars in the mains street of Kirkuk by the Kurds and some communist party members. As a result, panic among the Turkmen population in Kirkuk caused them to approach the Turkmen member of the Kirkuk governing council Mr. Hassan Turan and Turkmen Chief of Police Burhan Tayip, asking for advice and help. 

    So on the 27th of July both Mr. Hassan Turan approached the Kirkuk governor Mr. Mustafa Abdullrahman who is a Kurd. After a lengthy meeting and discussion with him on this subject, Mr. Mustafa Abdullrahman acknowledged to Mr. Hassan Tuan that a Kurdish protest has been organised and he assured Mr. Hassan Turan but all the government offices shall be opened and participation in the demonstration is not compulsory. 

    But on the afternoon and evening of the 27th of July Mr. Hassan Turan and Turkmen Chief Police in Kirkuk Mr. Burhan Tayip and also Turhan Abdurrahman appeared on Turkmeneli TV advising the worried Turkmen population about the demonstration. What they have to do. Measures that are needed to be taken and both advised the Turkmen citizens to carry out their normal business. Shop keepers are free to open their shops and all governmental offices would open and no one should be forced to participate in this demonstration. He also mentioned that the Kurds have the right to demonstrate in order to express their protest. Both advised the population to be calm and avoid any provocation that might be implemented by the other side (which he meant by the Kurds). 

    In the meantime, the Kirkuk governor Mr., Mustafa Abdullrahman who is a Kurd never appeared on the TV or on radio to assure the population in Kirkuk this is going to be a Kurdish demonstration and no one is forced to attend this protest. Whereas the Kurdish directors for many government offices have openly threatened Turkmens staff their salaries will be cut if they do not participate in the protest. The Kurdish police have threatened the shop keepers to close their shops and any shop that opens will be looted and destroyed.

    In the meantime on the 27th of July, mini bus drivers owned by the Turkmen reported that their car disc and certificate of Insurance had been forcedly taken by the Kurdish police and they were informed this would be returned when these drivers transport the Kurdish demonstrators to the meeting point free of charge.

    On the 28th of July, prior to the demonstration the local government in Kirkuk and Kurdish-led personnel of the two Kurdish parties blocked all road access that lead to government works places. They set up various checking point in order to prevent the people from going to their work.

    The shop keepers were forced to close their shops and Kurdish director in various governmental offices locked the main doors to prevent the people from attending their work place and forced the employees to participate in the demonstration. 

    At about 9.00am, approximately three thousand Kurdish protesters gathered near Turkmen Castel (Qelat Kirkuk) as a meeting point to commence their protest towards the Kirkuk governing in order to show their anger and to condemn the adoption of the law of elections for provincial assemblies and causing a postponement of elections in the city for an indefinite period by the Iraqi government. 

    Since the security of the town is controlled by both the US forces and the police in Kirkuk, thus they were obliged to guarantee the safety and security for the people in Kirkuk, but it was negligence on behalf of the US forces for granting permission for the Kurdish protest to go ahead and especially allowing the Kurdish protestors to pass through a routes that are mainly Turkmen neighbourhood, This protest was designed by the Kurds to show their mussels and to provoke the Turkmen population in the town. Nevertheless, the demonstration commenced from Qelat Kirkuk toward the Kirkuk governing office to demand the holding of elections and the application of Article 140 for the normalization of the situation in the province. 

    According to the eyewitness, Kurdish demonstrators, Kurdish police wearing civil clothes were brought from outside of the Turkmen city of Kirkuk such as Erbil and Suleymaniyah by mini buses, private cars and police cars. This was to mislead the media and to show the world that the overwhelming population of Kirkuk was refusing the decision of the Iraqi central government towards the adoption of the law of elections for provincial assemblies causing a postponement of elections in the city for an indefinite period. 

    The Kurdish demonstrators prior the demonstration were seen carrying automatic weapons, pistols, iron bars, baseball bats and Kurdish flags. The protestors were escorted and protected by the local police forces that mainly consist of Kurds and also Kurdish secret service police who are known as Asayish.

    The Kurdish protestors walked through the street of Kirkuk and chanting patriotic songs and provocation slogans against the Arabs and the Turkmens. Almost at 11am on the 28/7/2008 at the [Nafura] fountain area opposite to the Kirkuk governate, an explosion occurred and according to the Kurdish police, the explosion was caused by a female suicide bomber. Killing at least 22 and injuring at least 120 while the Kurdish were demonstrating but no one claimed responsibility for the bombing, which bore the hallmarks of Sunni Arab extremists. Nonetheless, many in the crowd blamed Kurds extremists for the attack. 

    After the explosion, the Kurdish guards started to open fire, shooting into the air as “Najat Hassam, a senior member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), quoted by AFP as saying.”More people responded to the gunfire with heavy shooting. The rumours in the towns was that the Kurdish police carried out this attack in order to create chaos, instability and to show the world that they are the victims but the more realistic reason was that to create a civil war thus the Kurdish militia would have a good reason to enter the town with large numbers of Kurdish militia. 

    Turkmen properties after being attacked by the Kurds

    But within a few minutes, rumours and misleading information was started by the Kurdish police stating, the explosion was caused by the Turkmen. The Kurdish Asayish started directing the protestors to attack the Turkmen targets in the city of Kirkuk. Elsewhere, the media started broadcasting Kurdish news claiming that the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) guards opened fire on the Kurdish demonstrators and that the Kurdish demonstrators defended themselves by replying back. 

    The protesters attacked the headquarters of the ITF party headquarters, the head quarter of the political prisoners and families of martyrs, Sonuber hotel, Turkmen shops and Turkmen properties. But the most striking thing was that the Turkmeneli TV Station was attacked and its content was burnt prior to the blast.

    The ITF head office is approximately a distance of one kilometer away from the site of the blast and the ITF headquarters is located in a residential area and not on the main street as was stated by the Kurdish media. 

    A large number of Kurdish armed demonstrators escorted with Kurdish police opened heavy fire to the Turkmen guards whom were guarding the building which this resulted injury one of the guards, including the head of the security personnel. They set ablaze to their vehicles; the demonstrators later attacked Turkmen properties and the set a light to the cars and properties of the Turkmen people. Then the Kurdish Asayish burst into the ITF office and burnt it contents and cause a tremendous damages to the building and its contents. Then the Kurdish secret police kidnapped five Turkmen guards including the injured person. 

    One of the ITF guards was wounded and after they ran out of ammunition no help arrived from the police. Then the ITF building was stormed by the Kurdish secret police and the armed demonstrators. The five Turkmen guards including the injured guard were taken to the undisclosed location by the Kurdish Asayish.

    Then the content of the Iraqi ITF building was ransacked and its content was set on the fire. Staff cars and ITF cars were set on fire and all this happened in the presence of the local Kirkuk police whom are mainly Kurds. All these atrocities occurred in the front of the eyes US forces and local police. The police forces in Kirkuk didn’t take any action against the protesters but kept watching them. 

    ITF in Kirkuk after being attacked by Kurdish militia
    Turkmen properties being attacked by the Kurds
    ITF in Kirkuk after being attacked by Kurdish militia

    But the most interesting thing was that after the explosion Mr.Yahya Albarzenchi, of Kurdish origin, a Cameraman working for Associated Press was taking images for the Kurdish protestors who are attacking the Turkmen, but unfortunately the protestors thought that Mr. Yahiya Albarzenchi is a Turkmen citizen working for the Turkmeneli TV station as a Cameraman. He was immediately attacked by the Kurdish crowds with fists, sticks, iron bars and was kicked variously while he was lying on the ground unconscious. The footage of the attack on the Mr.Yahya Albarzenchi the cameraman working for Associated Press was shown frequently on the Turkmeneli TV Satellite on the 30th of July 2008. The Turkmeneli TV showed how the Kurdish mobs had beaten Mr.Yahya Albarzenchi even when he was unconscious on the ground. But prior to this film footage the Kurdish police announced that the Mr.Yahya Albarzenchi was among the dead during the blast. 

    Turkmen properties being attacked by the Kurds

    After the explosion, the Kurdish police had set up check point on the road that leads into and out of Kirkuk. Cars were stopped and searched. Turkmen individuals were taken out of the car and attacked, beaten, abused and their car was smashed before leaving the check point. The attack on the Turkmens was widely condemned by Iraqi politicians, civil organizations and Turkmen organisations but the most striking thing was that Kirkuk governor and Iraqi president Jalal Talabani whom both is Kurds did not condemn the attack on the Turkmen in Kirkuk. 

    Turkmen properties being attacked by the Kurds

    The problem of Kirkuk is not a constitutional one but lies in the ambiguity of Article 140. According to article 140 of Iraqi constitution, the problem of the disputed areas, notably the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, addressed three stages of a normalization and then to conduct a census among the population, followed by a referendum on the fate of areas which will decide whether Kirkuk will join the Conservatives or the Kurdistan region. It was supposed to accomplish those stages during a maximum period of 31 December last year a deadline which was extended by the united nation representative without the approval of the central government for six months ending on June 30th.

    Turkmen properties being attacked by the Kurds

    Nevertheless, the Kurdish Brotherhood List at the Kirkuk Governorate Council held an extraordinary meeting on the 31/7/2008. The 24 members of the 41-member of the Kirkuk Governorate Council presented a request to the Kurdistan Region Government and the Iraqi parliament to make the governorate part of Kurdistan Region as they believe that Article 140 of the Constitution has not been implemented and that Article 24 of the Provincial Council Election Draft Law does not meet their ambitions. 

    Whereas the Turkmen and Arabs regarded this extraordinary session as illegal. Also the Turkmen leadership has requested to replace the Kurdish police in Kirkuk with army forces from central and southern Iraq, the postponement of the elections and adaptation of the division of Kirkuk to the three constituencies include the proportion of 32 % for both Arabs and Kurds and Turkmen and 4% for Assyrians

    In the meantime, on the 31/7/2008, a statement by the Turkish Foreign Ministry was released regarding the issue of Kirkuk, which stated that the Turkish Foreign Ministry were concerned and were deeply alarmed about the demand by some members of the governorate of Kirkuk, regarding a Kurdish list to join the Northern Department. The Turkish Ministry of Foreign affairs said in a statement: ‘We in Turkey express our deep concern on what we see and what happened in the governorate of Kirkuk, where some members agreed to join the Council in Kirkuk to the north of Iraq and Turkey’s position on Kirkuk would not have ever changed in the present and future and the Arab and Turkmen called this moves by the Kurd as a provocation.’ 

    However, on the 2/8/2008 the Arabs in the distrust of Hawija demonstrated against the Kurdish decision and the Turkmeneli Camera was there to show the plight of the Arabs. He was arrested when he returned to the check point that was set up by the Kurdish police at the entrance to Kirkuk. He was interrogated, abused verbally and physically. 

    Mofak salman Kerkuklu graduated in England with a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Oxford Brookes University and completed an MSc in Medical Electronics and Physics at London University and an MSc in Computing Science and Information Technology at South Bank University. He is also a Chartered Engineer from the Institution of Engineers of Ireland. Mr.Mofak Salman is the author of Brief History of Iraqi Turkmen and Turkmen of Iraq and The Turkmen City of Tuz Khormatu. He is the Turkmeneli Party representative for both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. He has had a large number of articles published in various newspapers and websites.

    This book was written with four clear purposes in mind: firstly, to make an assessment of the current position of Turkmen in Kirkuk; secondly, to highlight the oppression of Turkmen after the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s regime; thirdly, to introduce a brief history of the Turkmen in Iraq to the world; and finally, to draw the world’s attention to the situation and the oppression of Turkmen in Iraq and also to reveal the Kurdish atrocities against the Turkmen