Political activities of Turkmens during Iraqi Kingdom (1921-1958)

The problems confronting Iraqi Turkmen during the period between 1920 and 1958 has been researched in our thesis, making use of the Royal Palace files, Iraqi Ummah Assembly session papers, Iraqi and Turkish state archives, chronicles and periodicals of the time and the concerned books and articles mainly in Turkish and Arabic languages.Deterioration in Turkmen?s situation that had been started in the time of King Faisal the First (1921-1933) became even worse in the time of King Gazi (1933-1939). An Arabization policy was superimposed upon the Turkmen in those years as a result of which, they had big troubles. Some of them were exiled outside the Turkmen areas, which were re-inhabited by Arabic settlers. All the administrative offices in the Turkmen region were completely filled with the Arab or Kurdish officers.Between 1939 and 1945 during which the Second World War had been fought, Iraq experienced a period filled with political turbulences and external interventions. The prominent political figures of both this period and the Cold War period (1945-1958) following it were Abdulillah, the crown prince and the regent and Nuri Said, the prime-minister. Both of them were known to be the British sympathizers. Turkmen negatively effected from the economic and political crises in the country while obliged to struggle against the injustices.In our investigation period, Turkmen were subjected two massacres, both of which were performed in Kerkuk. One of them was the levy massacre in 1924, and the other was the Gavurbağı massacre in 1946. Those massacres deeply affected the Turkmen people up to the present time.Key words:1.Turkmen,2.Iraq,3.Iraq Kingdom,4.Kurds,5.Arabs,6.Britan,7.Human rights.