How Arabs and Kurds are sidelining Iraq's Turkmen communityhttps://en.majalla.com/node/322560/politics/how-arabs-and-kurds-are-sidelining-iraqs-turkmen-community
How Arabs and Kurds are sidelining Iraq's Turkmen community
Once part of the elite, the fortunes of the country's 'third nationality' have fallen. Politically sidelined for supporting Turkey, Iraq's Turkmen have had enough and are now starting to leave.
SABAH ARAR / AFP
Iraqi Turkmen flags hang along a street in Kirkuk's oil-rich, multi-ethnic northern city ahead of the May 12, 2018 parliamentary polls.
How Arabs and Kurds are sidelining Iraq's Turkmen community
One of the major groups within Iraq’s political scene has faced a series of significant recent setbacks that has undermined their sense of security. Turkmen, sometimes called the country’s “third nationality”, comprise up to 5% of Iraq’s population. There are around two million Iraqi Turkmen, according by their political representatives, but just 400,000 according to official election statistics.
Earlier this year, a ruling from the Supreme Court of Iraq removed the national parliament’s recognition of Turkmen as a distinct group. Turkmen considered this to have been the “only positive political distinction” extended by the legislature.
The court decided to abolish a “quota for religious and ethnic minorities” set up for the Kurdistan regional parliament, where Turkmen held five seats out of 111. After a month-long debate, the Supreme Court partially reversed its decision, leaving Turkmen with just two seats in the regional parliament.
Suffering setbacks
Turkmen political parties have not given up. They are fighting to secure their part of what is known as a “guaranteed share” within government agencies and state institutions, akin to that granted to Arabs and Kurds. But the signal sent by the Supreme Court has led to unease.
This follows another setback for Iraq’s Turkmen concerning their national status. How they have been affected by Iraq’s internal political dynamics will have implications not just for the group but for the country and the wider region.
Primarily concentrated in an area extending from the town of Tal Afar, northwest of Mosul, stretching south and east to the city of Kirkuk and its southern and eastern outskirts, the Turkmen have had a torrid time of late.
Iraq's Supreme Court abolished a quota for minorities set up for the Kurdistan regional parliament, where Turkmen parties held five seats
A few months before the court's original decision over the quota, they suffered yet another setback, this time over the federal government's reaction to two separate calls to set up independent governorates.
The Turkmen had called for one to be established in the Tal Afar district, in the Nineveh province, and the group's heartlands, where Turkmen form the majority. Governorate status is seen as a way for an ethnic group to protect themselves and preserve their national, political, cultural, and linguistic identity. However, the federal government and Iraq's Arab and Kurdish groups refused to support the idea. Adding insult to injury, a request was later approved to turn the predominately Kurdish Halabja district within Sulaymaniyah province into a governorate.
Results from provincial council elections entirely diminished the influence of Turkmen political forces, who failed to form a bloc in the provincial council. In Kirkuk, where they claim to make up a third of the population, Turkmen parties seek a "balanced representation" of 32% alongside Arabs and Kurds in the province's governing institutions, but only two Turkmen candidates won seats on the 16-seat council, giving them only 12.5%.
Another setback came during negotiations to form a new local government. Turkmen parties argued that it was their turn to choose the governor of Kirkuk, after Kurds and Arabs had held this position since 2003.
But an agreement was struck between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and part of the Arab bloc that cut the Turkmen out. They were left with the deputy chairmanship of the provincial council. The Unified Iraqi Turkmen Front said this amounted to their exclusion from Iraqi politics in the provinces of Kirkuk and Nineveh.
Some analysts think the Turkmen are paying a price for aligning with Turkish positions. Researcher Omar Mullah Abdul Qadir said they faced a "political imbalance from the interplay of four political factors, all stemming from the alignment with Turkey," the goals of which now look "impossible to achieve due to new realities".
Iraqi Turkmen flags hang along a street in Kirkuk's oil-rich, multi-ethnic northern city ahead of the May 12, 2018 parliamentary polls.
Internal divisions
Qadir said: "For two full decades, from the establishment of the new political system in Iraq to now, Turkmen political forces tried to hinder the development of the American project in Iraq. As a result, they faced severe internal divisions."
This led to an internal Turkmen "civil war", he said, between the Turkmen Shiite community, who form 20-30% of Iraq's Turkmen population, and their Sunni Turkmen counterparts, mostly represented by the Unified Front of Iraq's Turkmen.
"When (Shiite Turkmen) found no clear political representation for their visions and strategies within the Turkmen Front, they joined the central Shiite parties, particularly the religious and sectarian ones, leading to a divided Turkmen political community." Qadir added that the Turkmen's alliance with Ankara meant "opposition to the development of the Kurdish situation in Iraq".
He said: "In the disputed areas, particularly in Kirkuk province, and in their position on the Kurdistan region, the Turkmen forces approached their Kurdish counterparts with excessive sensitivity, perceiving the rise of Kurdish influence and power as being at the expense of their own political ambitions and overarching goals.
"As a result, they spent two decades in conflict with the two dominant powers in modern Iraq: the federal government, with its Iran-aligned political forces, and the Kurdistan region with its main parties.
"Consequently, the Turkmen were marginalised from the political landscape, and many Iraqi factions actively obstructed the realisation of their aspirations."
Turkmen spent two decades in conflict with the two dominant powers in modern Iraq: the federal government, and Kurdistan. Consequently, they were marginalised
Researcher Omar Mullah Abdul Qadir
The Turkmen community has undergone significant socio-economic change. In the past, Turkmen have traditionally belonged to the upper commercial and administrative classes in their regions, including Baghdad.
However, a dramatic shift has occurred. Their social and economic status within the country's class hierarchy has fallen, while Iraqis, long considered part of the lower economic classes, have seen their status rise. In terms of demographics, lower birth rates have seen the proportion of Iraqi Turkmen plummet to half the pre-2003 levels. Higher birth rates in Arab and Kurdish communities have exacerbated the disparity.
Dispersed along fault-lines
Turkmen communities sit directly over some of Iraq's most active political, religious, sectarian, and nationalist fault lines. In Kirkuk and Nineveh, Turkmen were divided between Sunni and Shiite, particularly in the town of Tal Afar and its surrounding district, as well as the southern countryside of Kirkuk province.
This division led hundreds of young Turkmen to join extremist groups, especially after 2007, following the escalation of sectarian confrontations. Nearly all Shiite Turkmen were forced to flee Nineveh province during the years of sectarian strife.
Most moved to Baghdad and Diyala province after several massacres of their community members at the hands of Islamic State (IS) terrorists, but after the formation of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), the situation changed.
Now, with the upper hand, Shiite Turkmen returned and attacked the same areas, committing atrocities that were no less heinous. Turkey's warnings and calls from the Unified Iraqi Turkmen Front to reconcile and unite fell on deaf ears.
Straddling both sides of the political and sectarian conflict, Turkmen lacked the cohesion that could have united them within a national and political space. Today, there are no towns or cities in Iraq with a clear Turkmen majority. Even those with a relatively high Turkmen population are dispersed.
Turkmen are now scattered from the far northwest of Nineveh province to the south-east of Kirkuk province, with some communities in Erbil, Diyala, and Baghdad. These communities are all separated by Arab and Kurdish villages and towns.
Peddlers sell to pedestrians near the citadel in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, with Iraqi Turkmen and Iraqi national flags can be seen flying on the citadel on October 17, 2017.
To stay or to go?
This geographical spread, with the lack of a discernible heartland, has contributed to the decision of many Iraqi Turkmen to emigrate, particularly to Turkey, where the language and culture feel less foreign. This is especially true for the Turkmen, who have the financial resources to do so.
Most Turkmen students and retirees also now settle in Turkey and gradually obtain Turkish citizenship, leaving the economic, environmental, and security pressures of Iraq behind. Turkmen business owners and politicians have the same idea. Most own homes in Istanbul and Ankara, areas of which have even become predominantly Turkmen.
The remaining Iraqi Turkmen political groups still make demands for a special province for Turkmen in central Iraq, for the position of Kirkuk governor, and for an equal distribution of key positions between Turkmen, Arabs, and Kurds
They also call for the recognition of Turkmen as an official language (alongside Arabic and Kurdish), the return of thousands of Turkmen who disappeared during the war against IS (mostly women), and the restoration of the Turkmen quota in the Kurdistan Regional Parliament—and a similar quota in the federal parliament.
Making these demands is one thing, but Turkmen leaders have not yet outlined how they plan to achieve them, at least not publicly. They emphasise Turkey's support, but this typically equates to them advancing Turkish interests, rather than their own. Some think that if they want to reverse their fortunes, this may be a good place to start.
