Status of Turkmans in Iraq after the Kingdom (1958-2003)

Turkmen, whose historical past in Iraq goes down to 1500 years before are the third populated ethnic group in the country following the Arabs and the Kurds. After dominating the region for centuries they had been broken off from Turkey and became a simple minority in Iraq, established under British mandate following the First World War.Pressure and injustice over Turkmen had begun from the formation of British tutelage, and continued increasingly in the regal and republican periods. In the years, which Baas Party was in power the injustices had become an open state policy. In those years the government tried to assimilate Turkmen by Arabizing them. Since the successive Iraqi governments considered Iraq as an Arab country they aimed to ignore and even eradicate the Kurdish and Turkish ethnic minorities. Being more crowded in number, living in a more convenient geographic area to resist, being better organized socially, and having stronger external supporters the assimilation policy over the Kurds was proved to be unsuccessful. However, the Turkmen, who were much more disadvantageous than the Kurds in these points, were forced to spend big effort to save their national identities.The Turkmen, against all the pressure used and injustices done on them, had never resorted to arms for a separatist movement. Nevertheless, the successive Iraqi governments, which never get over the Mosul syndrome, accused the Turkmen of betrayal and Pan-Turanism. During Saddam Hussein period, in which assimilation had become a state policy, leading Turkmen intellectuals were executed, Turkmen people were forced to mass migration, and any kind of inhuman methods of Arabization were imposed on them.Pressures and injustices have not been removed after the Gulf Crisis, when a ?safe haven? in the northern Iraq was established. By being divided to two, the Turkmen population left outside the safe haven endured the pressure of Baas regime while those inside the safe haven abode by the pressure of the Kurds. Baghdad government continued to Arabize the Turkmen under its authority whereas Kurds, trying to fill the authority gap in the safe haven initiated a suppression policy against them. As for the Turkmen political movements emerged in the region, they failed to achieve because of the lack of political experience and personal interests overriding the social interests.