Kirkuk, a multicultural city

Advertisement of a Turkmen festival held in Kirkuk in November 2008. Kirkuk Turkmen are not so similar to Turks than the Turkish state claims.

There was a massive suicide bomb attack in Kirkuk during Eid al-Adha, the 11th December 2008. Fifty people died.

News from Kirkuk in international mass media is always like this: big bomb explosion, small bomb explosion, attack, murder. There is no information about the every day life.

I visited Kirkuk five times during this year. In autumn 2008 I spent six days in Kirkuk province.

What did I see? People who try to keep the normal daily routines despite very heavy military presence. They wait desperately Article 140 to be put on action.

Despite its enormous oil resources, Kirkuk is a poor no one’s land: Baghdad government is controlling it but not developing its infrastructure, fearing that the city will fall to the hands of Kurds. KRG is doing some social and health programs there (for example Roz) but its share of the budget of Iraq is meant to the provinces of Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaymania, not to the Kurdish provinces outside the region.

Many people told me about the pre-Saddam Kirkuk. It was nice multicultural city with lots of tolerance and respect to other ethnic groups. Traditionally most inhabitants in Kirkuk are Kurds and Turkmen; most Arabs have arrived there recently (and are also victims of Saddam’s terror, they have been deported from the Delta area in South Iraq). Many Kurds and Turkmen speak both languages and mixed marriages are common.

People repeated that the problems and tension in Kirkuk are led from outside, Kirkuk residents want to have a peaceful life but there are too many foreign groups acting in Kirkuk.

I spoke also with many Turkmen. When they heard a foreigner speaking Turkish they started to pour their despair on me, how the world does not know what the Turkmen of Kirkuk want: peace. Turkman is different language than Turkish (which I cannot well), I did not understand much else from their speeches that they were desperate.

Since the Kurdish uprising 1991, Turkey has supported Jabhat Turkmen -party in Kirkuk to sabotage Kurdistan becoming independent with the oil resources of Kirkuk. Information and experience should have flown to the opposite direction: pre-Saddam Kirkuk was modern multicultural city where different ethnic groups have co-existed centuries in peace and harmony. The Turkish state is built on the false identity of mononationalism and Turks are afraid of multiculturalism. They should not be: the pre-Saddam Kirkuk was an example of this.

Turkish people should learn from the history of Kirkuk and use the experiences of peaceful co-existence for changing Turkey a similar place as Kirkuk was until the Baath party destroyed the atmosphere. But instead of learning something from others Turks wants to bring the repressing Turkish mentality to Kirkuk, and continue the destruction of both Kurds and Turkmen from where Saddam finished his job.