Arabization of the Kirkuk Region
Nouri Talabany
Kurdish Academy
The diamond-shaped Kirkuk region lies between the Zagros Mountains in the north-east, the Lower Zab and the Tigris Rivers in the north-west and west, the Hamrin mountain range in the southwest, and the Diyala (Sirwan) river in the south-east. This is the region and city known as Ara'pha to the ancient cultures2 and as Karkha d’beth Silokh to the classical world (whence the name “Kirkuk”). To Sassanians, this was their governorate of Garmakân.3 To the medieval authors the region was known as Garmiyân. This historic name still survives for the region in the common folk language, while the classical Seleucid name of Kirkuk is reserved for the city alone.
Major trade routes pass through or touch on the borders of the Kirkuk Region. Many mountain passes such as the Bazyan, Ba’ssara and Sagerma also terminate in the Kirkuk regions As a consequence, the area has always been of strategic import to the powers that came to occupy it throughout the ages. To safeguard these commercial and strategic crossings, military garrisons were
Nouri Talabany
- Born in the city of Kirkuk and completed elementary, intermediate and secondary education there.
- Received BSc in Law from the University of Baghdad.
- Received PhD in Law from Paris University, France.
- Taught at Basra, Baghdad, Sulaintani and Salahadin Universities from 1968 until December 1982, when he w'as compulsorily retired for political reasons.
- Proposed a federal system for Kurdistan Region in a study written in London, in 1974. This appeared in the Iraqi Academic magazine, Kurdish Section, Vols. 16 & 17, 1987.
- Author of the first dictionary of legal terms in Kurdish, Arabic, French and English, published in 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010.
- Published more than 170 studies and articles in Kurdish, and 64 in Arabic and more than 30 in English and French, published in both Kurdistan and elsewhere, some of them have been presented at international conferences in the USA and Europe.
- A Draft Constitution for the Iraqi Kurdistan Region was prepared by him in 1992.
- Member of the High Legal Committee in the Kurdistan Region in 1992.
- Chairman of the Kurdish Organisation for Human Rights in Britain from 1993 till 2000, and Director of the Kirkuk Trust for Research and Studies in London in 2000.
- President of the High Electoral Commission of the Kurdistan Region in July 2004.
- An independent MP in the Parliament of the Kurdistan Region (2005 - 2009).
- Member of the Kurdish Academy since November 2007.
- Elected as a President of the Kurdish Academy in September 2011
Table of Contents
Foreword by Lord Avebury / 5
Preface / 6
I A synopsis of the History and Geography of the Kirkuk Region / 7
II The Non-Kurdish ethnic population in the Kirkuk Region: The Turkmans / 12
1. Origins /14
2. Population Estimates / 15
3. Relations between Kurds and Turkmans / 18
4. Political Orientations of the Turkmans / 21
III Earliest Attempts at Arabization / 23
A - The period of the monarchy / 24
The role of the oil company in changing the ethnic character of the city of Kirkuk / 25
The building of the Hawija Irrigation Project to settle Arab tribes in the Kirkuk Region / 26
B - The period from 1958 to 1968 / 28
Measures towards Arabization taken by the organizers of the February 1963 coup in the Kirkuk Governorate / 37
C - The period from 1968 to the present / 39
Measures taken by the Iraqi regime inside the city of Kirkuk / 40
Measures taken by the regime to Arabize the entire Kirkuk Governorate / 49
1. City District of Kirkuk / 53
2. Dubz District (Arabized to “Al - Debiss) / 58
3. Hawija District / 59
4. Chamchamal District / 59
5. Duz-Khurmatu District / 61
6. Kiffi District / 64
7. Kala’r District / 67
IV The result of Arabization and the destruction of the Kirkuk Region / 69
Appendixes / 76
Some pictures of the citadel of Kirkuk / 134
FOREWORD
I am very glad to have been invited to write this preface to Professor Nouri Talabany’s important study of demographic engineering in the region of Kirkuk.
According to the latest report of the UN Special Reporter on Iraq, Max van dor Stole, Iraq remains by far and away the state with the largest number of cases of disappearance. There are hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and tens of thousands more are de facto refugees in Jordan. But in addition to those who vanished into thin air, or fled into exile, there are uncounted numbers of internally displaced. The Marsh Arabs of the south are not the only victims of Saddam’s terror, as Dr. Talabany shows, and the systematic alteration of the population mix in the Kirkuk region has been going on for much longer. It began almost immediately after the Ba’thists assumed power by coup d’etat in 1968 and, in the process, tens of thousands of Kurdish families have been forcibly transported into exile. This atrocity, in the worst tradition of the late Joseph Stalin, has been unaccountably overlooked in the west, yet it has profound implications for any post-Saddam settlement in Iraq. Will the dispossessed be restored to their homes and lands, as we insist in the case of Bosnia? Or is ethnic cleansing permissible when it is done quietly enough?
Professor Talabany has done the world a valuable service in exposing Saddam’s ethnocidal designs against the Kurdish people of Kirkuk. Let this be added to the list of crimes against humanity for which, one day, Inshallah, he will be made to pay!
Lord Avebury
Chairman, Parliamentary Human Rights Group House of Lords.
London, April 10, 1995
Preface
The Kirkuk region, rich in petroleum deposits and vast agricultural lands, has been one of the principal obstacles to finding a peaceful solution to the Kurdish question in Iraq.1
Geographically, the region straddles the strategic trade routes between Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey and beyond. However, it was the discovery of vast quantities of petroleum deposits in the region that led Great Britain, in 1926, to append Kirkuk and the former Ottoman Wilayet of Mosul (of which the Kirkuk region was a part) to the newly created state of Iraq. This new state, created in 1921, was under the Mandate of Great Britain. Ever since, and particularly after 1963, there have been continuous attempts by the central government of Iraq to arabize the strategic region of Kirkuk.
To understand better the reasons for this policy, let us, first, briefly consider the geopolitics, history and demography of the Kirkuk region, and then analyse the situation both before and after these attempts.
1 This book was first published in Arabic in 1995, both in Sweden and Iraqi-Kurdistan. A second edition was published in 1999 in London. In 1998, it was translated into Kurdish and published in Sweden and later, in 2000, in Iraqi Kurdistan. It has now been translated into English and updated in this edition.
A Synopsis of the history and geography
Of the Kirkuk region
The diamond-shaped Kirkuk region lies between the Zagros Mountains in the north-east, the Lower Zab and the Tigris Rivers in the north-west and west, the Hamrin mountain range in the southwest, and the Diyala (Sirwan) river in the south-east. This is the region and city known as Ara'pha to the ancient cultures2 and as Karkha d’beth Silokh to the classical world (whence the name “Kirkuk”). To Sassanians, this was their governorate of Garmakân.3 To the medieval authors the region was known as Garmiyân. This historic name still survives for the region in the common folk language, while the classical Seleucid name of Kirkuk is reserved for the city alone.
Major trade routes pass through or touch on the borders of the Kirkuk Region. Many mountain passes such as the Bazyan, Ba’ssara and Sagerma also terminate in the Kirkuk regions As a consequence, the area has always been of strategic import to the powers that came to occupy it throughout the ages. To safeguard these commercial and strategic crossings, military garrisons were established in forts in the nearby cities of Kifri, Tuz-Khurmatu, Daquq, Perdé (A'ltun Copri) as well as within Kirkuk city itself. The forts doubled as military strongholds and customs houses to exact duties from the caravans and to …
2 S. H. Gadd and Sidney Smith, Revue. d'Assyr. et d'Archeol. Orient, 1926. They add that the region was often attacked by mountain peoples who inhabited its north western territories during the Babylonian and Assyrian times.
3 In Aramaic and Syriac chronicles the name appears as Beth Garamâye, subsequently shortened to Bâgarmi. Early in Islamic times, this name and the Sassanian administrative terms were Arabized to become, respectively, Bâjarmi and Jarmakân.
4 Tawfiq Wahby, A Journey front Darband-i Bâzyân to Mia'y-Tasluja (Baghdad: Al-Ma’arif Press, 1965), p. 6; Tawfiq Wahby, “The name of Kirkuk”, Al-Ka’teb Magazine, June, 1958, Baghdad.
Nouri Talabany
Arabization of the Kirkuk Region
Kurdish Academy
Arabization of the Kirkuk Region
Nouri Talabany
Professor of Law,
President of the Kurdish Academy
Foreword by Lord Avebury
Fourth edition, 2012
Published by the Kurdish Academy
Haji Hashim Publishing House, Erbil
Number of copies: 1000 copies
Kurdish Academy publishing series No.: 146
