A NEW BOOK : "TURKMEN OF IRAQ"

A new book “Turkmen of Iraq” has been published by Mofak Salman Kerkuklu


The Author

Mofak Salman Kerkuklu graduated in England with a BSc Honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Oxford Brookes University and completed MSc’s in both Medical Electronic and Physics at London University and a MSc in Computing Science and Information Technology at South Bank University. He is also a qualified Charter Engineer from the Institution of Engineers of Ireland. Mr. Mofak Salman is an author of a book “ Brief History of Iraqi Turkmen”. He is the Turkmeneli Party representative for both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. He has written a large number of articles that were published in various newspapers.


Purpose and Scope

This book was written with two clear objectives. Firstly, to make an assessment of the current position of Turkmen in Iraq, and secondly, to draw the world’s attention to the situation of the Turkmen. This book would not have been written without the support of Turkmen all over the world.

I wish to reveal to the world the political situation and suffering of the Iraqi Turkmen under the Iraqi regime, and to expose Iraqi Kurdish bandits and reveal their premeditated plan to change the demography of the Turkmen-populated area. I would like to dedicate this book to every Turkmen who has been detained in Iraqi prisons; to Turkmen who died under torture in Iraqi prisons; to all Turkmen whose sons and daughters were executed by the Iraqi regime; to all Turkmen who fought and died without seeing a free Turkmen homeland; and to the Turkmen City of Kerkuk, which is a bastion of cultural and political life for the Turkmen resisting the Kurdish occupation.

Therefore, my first and foremost sincere thanks are to Mr. Habib Hurmuzlu and Mr. Ercument Okcu, Global Strategic Institute. In addition, I would like to extend and express my sincere thanks to Mrs. Merry Fitzgerald and Mr. Stephen Hinch. I would also like to thank my family and, last but not least, my thanks go to my martyred brother, surgeon Dr. Bruhn Mohammed Salman Kerkuklu, who motivated and encouraged me from childhood to fight for the Turkmen cause in the Turkmeneli.

The book contains a very significant number of official documents that were obtained from the Iraqi secret service, Iraqi security forces, official letters issued by the government, governmental letters, forged documents issued by the Kurdish militia and others useful documents showing the oppression, arrest , imprisonment and the execution of the Turkmen. The book is very useful for showing the truth and facts about the city of Kerkuk and also revealing to the world the oppression of the Turkmen by the Kurdish militia after the occupation of Iraq moreover the book would be resourceful to the researchers whom are interested in studying the political situation of Iraq.

The book contains a significant number of photos showing the involvement of both Kurdish militia in changing the demography of the Turkmen city of Kerkuk and photos showing the co-operation of the Kurdish militia with the previous regime and the Israeli officials. However the majority of the enclosed documents are written in Arabic and they have been translated to English, also there are number of documents that are enclosed with the book written in English.

The book also describes

The current situation of the Turkmen in Turkmeneli
After the occupation of Iraq, the Turkmen, Arabs and Chaldo Assyrians had high expectations of the interim administration established after April 9, 2003. The Turkmen expected to see democracy, fairness, an end to discrimination, the right to self- determination and an end to violence. Unfortunately, the opposite has occurred in particular concerning the Iraqi Turkmen.

Presently the Turkmen have been undergoing Kurdization campaigns by the Kurds in Turkmeneli in an often more brutal fashion than carried out on Kurds by Saddam Hussein. The Iraqi Kurds are attempting by various methods to eliminate Turkmen identity especially from Kerkuk City in order to dilute them into Kurdish society.
Despite the fact that the Turkmen had been given assurances by the US forces that the Kurdish militia would not be allowed to enter Kerkuk and Mosul, the Kurdish onslaught did take place.

During the occupation of Kerkuk, the Kurds burnt the Registry Office and the land deeds for the Turkmen have been taken from the Registry Office intentionally and this makes it difficult for the Turkmen to establish the original inhabitants of the province. This orchestrated looting was a purposeful act meant to remove all official evidence proving the Turkmen presence in Kerkuk.

Iraqi Property Claims Commission

However, in April 2004, the Americans created the Iraqi Property Claims Commission to rule on restitution. By the end of 2004, the commission had received 10,044 claims from Kerkuk province. The commission’s statistics show that judges have come to a decision only on 25 cases. The head of the commission said in an interview that only two judges, both Kurds, were working on cases in Kerkuk. The commission has been unable to assign more judges because Kurdish political parties insist that only Kurds review the claims, which limits the number of qualified people.