Iraqi Turkmen Tribulations Highlighted  

Iraq Report
5 October 2001, Volume  4, Number  32
Iraq Report
By: David Nissman

Yuksek Soylemez, a retired Turkish ambassador, has written a column for the "Turkish
Daily News" of 1 October in which he highlights the lack of knowledge about Iraqi
Turkmens both internationally and in Turkey. He points out that in "the Turkish government
programs collecting dust in public libraries, no mention of the Iraqi Turkmens has ever been
made, or even a policy statement to confirm their existence from 1923 to this day." 

He sums up the tribulations faced by the Iraqi Turkmens in three words: "decomposition,
repression, and assimilation." The Turkmens have been subjected to the assimilation process
since earlier times, although this process has gained impetus since the establishment of Iraq
as an independent state, largely as the result of Baghdad's policies to disperse them
throughout the country in order to reduce their heavy concentration in the oil-rich north.
They have been subjected to repressive policies in order to attempt to avoid problems posed
to the regime by other sizable ethnic or religious groups, such as the Kurds in the north, and
the Shi'ites in the south. Especially since the 1990s, they have been exposed to the
arabization process which aims to assimilate them into the Arabic ethnic and cultural group. 

Soylemez suggests that Turkey should examine the economic dimension of the Turkmen
issue, which has not been exploited by Baghdad or Ankara. The Turkmens were left alone in
poverty and isolation. Soylemez says that since there had been extensive contacts between
Iraq and Turkey before the crisis in the Gulf, and now there are new incentives to revive the
trade of the past, the Iraqi Turkmens should be allotted a role to play in this, in the same way
that the Iraqi Kurds are playing a role in cross-border trade. 

It has also been proposed that an Iraqi Turkmen Institute be established. This would be a
potential stepping stone for developments in Iraq-Turkey relations. According to a recent
scholarly study by H. Tarik Oguzlu, "The Turkomans of Iraq as a factor in Turkish foreign
policy," based on the fact that the Turkmens "are Iraq's third-largest ethnic community with
a population of not less than 2 million…. The significance of the Turkoman population lies
in the calculations as to the final status of Iraq." (David Nissman)
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