THE ANCIENT CITADEL IN KERKUK HAS NEVER BEEN KURDISH!

THE ANCIENT CITADEL "KERKÜK KALASI" IN KERKÜK HAS NEVER BEEN KURDISH!

Michael Totten in his article posts photographs of The Citadel of Kerkuk and writes:
“Below are satellite images of a Kurdish neighborhood in Kirkuk in 1997 and 1998 before and after an ethnic cleansing bombardment.”

Contrary to what pseudo-reporter Michael Totten (see link below) writes, the Ancient Citadel of Kerkuk has never been Kurdish. Totten hasn’t got a clue about the history of the north of Iraq, he only repeats like a parrot what the chief of a Kurdish gang tells him. This is what I call unprofessional journalism, it’s dishonest and misleading. Totten never bothered to meet with the original inhabitants of Kerkuk, the Turkmens. Had he discussed the region’s history with Turkmen intellectuals he would not be writing such rubbish and misinforming his readers.

Totten’s articles about Iraq abound in inaccuracies and false information, but Totten is not only ignorant about Kerkuk’s history, he doesn’t even know that Hamburg is not the capital of Germany! Here again, like a parrot he repeats and takes for granted what his Mam Rostam, his Kurdish host tells him: “In Hamburg, Germany, there was a restaurant opposite the Turkish Embassy”!!!. One doesn’t have to be a “professional journalist” to know that Embassies are only located in the capital city of a country, but Totten doesn’t know…yet he has the cheek to write about Iraq’s history for his folk back home!

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/001417.html

I strongly recommend to those who wish to find the truth about KERKUK’s history and about the CITADEL OF KERKUK to read Dr. Suphi Saatçi’s well documented and beautifully illustrated book : The Urban Fabric and Traditional Houses of KERKUK (see my previous post).

Extract (Page 43) Dr. Suphi Saatçi writes:

‘ The most noteworthy aspect of Kirkuk’s Citadel, the urban fabric of which is lost almost completely, is that it housed the most significant examples of traditional residential architecture in the city. Most of the 800 houses located here were important examples of traditional Turkmen residential architecture (Figure 42) Only forty-five of them survive to this day, particularly as a result of recent assaults. Five or six of them were repaired, but their wooden doors and windows have been plundered since April 19, 2003 when Peshmergas entered the city”

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Michael J Totten’s reaction :

For God's sake, Blue Woman, I know very well that Hamburg isn't the capital of Germany. Errors inside quotes from other people are their errors, not mine.
I am also well aware of the tendency of Middle Easterners to inflate their ethnic and sectarian numbers in relation to the others. I'm sure Rostam does it, just as I'm sure you do it. I left out Rostam's numbers about the Kurds in Kirkuk because what he said is as unreliable as what you're saying.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at April 26, 2007 11:17 AM

Anyway, Turkey has a consulate in Hamburg. It was firebombed by terrorists in 1993.
Posted by: Michael J. Totten at April 26, 2007 12:53 PM

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Blue woman’s comments:

For God's sake, Michael Totten, stop equalizing the victims with the aggressors, as you westerners have been doing for decades in all conflicts in the Middle East, starting from Palestine and ending in Iraq.

Concerning the north of Iraq, you are putting me at the level of your Mam Rostam, who you are promoting as a new ‘Rambo’ while in actual fact he is nothing else but a gang leader, smuggler, killer and contrabandist who became one of the representatives of a community which has shamefully collaborated with the aggressors of the Iraqi people and the occupiers of Iraq after an illegal war of aggression for their self-interest and against the legitimate interests of the majority of the Iraqi people.

Mam Rostam and his gang who you are promoting and elevating to the status of a nation in the north of Iraq, mainly to break Iraq, to divide it and plunder its wealth, have always worked against the interest of the majority of the Iraqis.

Today, the Kurds are openly and unjustly marginalizing all the other inhabitants of the north of Iraq, especially the Turkmens who are incontestably not only the third main ethnic component of the Iraqi people representing 12% of Iraq’s total population but also undeniably the second main ethnic group of the north of Iraq, with their community counting no less than 3 million Turkmens representing at least 30% of the population of the north of Iraq, where Mam Rostam and his gang with the blessing of the Anglo-American aggressors of the Iraqi people have imposed their hegemony and are now denying the Turkmens their basic and legitimate rights, their history, their representation and the existence of their region ‘TURKMENELI’ in the north of Iraq.

Indeed, a few weeks ago Mr. Massud Barzani, the president of the Kurdish regional government ‘KRG’, passing beyond all limits of honesty, decency and objectivity, bluntly declared that the Turkmens were ‘only a few thousands’ in Kerkuk and he threatened Iraq’s northern neighbour, Turkey - who fed him and his family and who supported him and his group for decades - to intervene in its internal affairs creating problems in Turkey, if the Turks rejects his (Mr Barzani’s) lucubration, fallacious theory and ambition to create a state within the Iraqi state and come to the defence of their cousins, the Turkmens of Iraq , whose existence is threatened and whose legitimate rights and true representation in the north of Iraq are denied by the Kurds.

It is only the beginning of another source of problems for the entire Middle-East and for the majority of the people of this region that your Mam Rostam and his group are actively working to create, unfortunately reporters like yourself are willingly helping them to achieve their objective by diffusing their lies and their propaganda without any reservation and without any verification about their rightness and about the veracity of their declarations!

Time has come to stop throwing oil on the fire that the new crusaders led by the anglo-americans occupiers of Iraq have ignited in the region.

Concerning the inhabitants of the towns and cities of the north of Iraq I recommend you consult the “Ethnographical map – to show distribution of races in Northern Iraq” drawn by the British in 1922 for the purpose of their negotiations with Turkey before the signature of the Lausanne Treaty in July 1923.

You can refer to the British National Archives, London. File No. F.O.925/41335.

Even though this map is biased as it was drawn by the British to serve their imperialistic objectives for the negotiations with Turkey for the signature of the Lausanne Treaty and was intended to reduce the Turkmen importance and representation in the north of Iraq (Mosul Vilayat) and to limit the Turkmen region to a minimum minimorum for their imperialistic objectives, this map nonetheless indicates that: Tel Afer, villages around Mosul, Erbil, Altunkopru, Kerkuk, Tuz Khurmatu, Kifri, Karatepe, Khanekin, Kizlarbat, Mendeli, etc. were Turkmen towns and cities.


Posted by: Blue Woman at April 27, 2007 06:52 AM