TurkmenInstitute

ATAA President's Letter to Congress regarding human rights violations against the Iraqi Turkmens

I serve as President of the Assembly of Turkish American Associations (ATAA), which is the voice of over 250,000 Turkish Americans and 60 local Turkish organizations nationwide.

I am writing to express the ATAA’s grave concern regarding human rights violations against the Iraqi Turkmens in northern Iraq, including massacres, rapes, extrajudicial killings, incommunicado detention, torture, mistreatment, forced population displacements, takings of real property, as well as the denial of basic freedoms and democratic rights. The Turkmens suffered gravely under Saddam Hussein and welcomed the United States, believing that freedom and human rights had finally arrived for them. But Kurdish overlords in the region have replaced Saddam Hussein as the new oppressors. On July 3, 2007, Human Rights Watch published a 58-page report, “Torture and Denial of Due Process by Kurdish Security Forces,” detailing these and other violations. Please see, hrw.org.

BAGHDAD, July 8 — The death toll from a suicide truck bombing in a remote village in northern Iraq rose to around 150 on Sunday, making it one of the deadliest single bombings, if not the deadliest, since the 2003 invasion.

The attack, in the impoverished Shiite Turkmen village of Amerli, 100 miles north of Baghdad in Salahuddin Province, has highlighted fears that Sunni insurgents facing military crackdowns in Baghdad and Diyala Province are simply directing their attacks to areas outside the concentration of American troops.

TURKMENS PROTESTING AGAINST CNN's MISINFORMATION

E-mail addressed to CNN by Dr. Hassan AYDINLI, Turkmen Representative in Europe and President of the Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmen Rights in Belgium.

Sunday 8th July 2007.

MISINFORMATION, BIAS IN FAVOUR OF IRAQI KURDS AND LIES!!

Re: Explosion in the Turkmen town of AMIRLI

Amirli is a town in the centre of an area inhabited by the Turkmen BAYAT tribe since at least 800 years. No Kurd has ever lived in that town or its surrounding, as all this area is a well-known Turkmen area in Iraq, inhabited ONLY by TURKMENS.

When your correspondents Hala Gorani from Baghdad and your newsreaders Shihab Ratansi and Ratisla Vassileva are reporting about the horrible explosion of yesterday which killed over 150 innocent TURKMENS and injured over 200 TURKMENS and which caused the destruction of their houses and shops in Amerli, they are misinforming the international public opinion by reporting that Amerli is a locality inhabited by Shia Turkmens and Kurds. This is a lie and intentional misinformation as Kurds have never inhabited AMIRLI or its surroundings. In fact, this region is part of TURKMENELI, it is a Turkmen land and it has been inhabited by the Turkmen BAYAT tribe for the past 800 years.

The only possibility that Kurds were among the victims in Amirli is that they were the terrorists who caused the explosion.

Stop your pro-Kurdish propaganda and check your sources twice before you put the information on air.

Do not rely any more on Kurdish sources for information about what is happening in TURKMENELI, the Turkmen region of Iraq, as Kurds are trying to kurdify the Turkmen region by adding the name 'Kurds' to everything happening in Turkmeneli.

We know that after four and half years of illegal occupation of Iraq your so-called independent free reporters and journalists from Baghdad continue to be embedded with occupation forces and that they cannot investigate anything independently on their own, they are always relying on the occupation and Kurdish sources on Iraqi side. This is not independent, free and informative journalism, you are misleading and misinforming the public opinion about Iraq since decades and especially since the occupation of the country by the Anglo-Saxon forces in March 2003.

This is a wake-up call to you CNN people, start reporting the truth if you really are an independent and free information media!

AS MANY AS 150 DEAD IN "TURKMEN MASSACRE"

Prof Juan Cole writes:

Readers sometimes ask me if analyzing the news from Iraq every day doesn't get me down.It got me down today. Sunni Arab guerrillas, unable to operate as effectively in Baghdad because of the US troop surge, had a suicide bomber drive a truck loaded with explosives into a market in a village on the fringes of the northern city of Tuz Khurmato and detonate his payload. As I write, authorities had counted 130 dead bodies, many of them women and children, and relatives reported another 20 dead. Another 250 or so were wounded, some of them badly, according to the Arabic daily al-Hayat.

The latter says Iraqis are referring to the bombing as "the Turkmen massacre." Some 40 homes, 20 shops, and a dozen automobiles were also destroyed.Like the detonation of the minarets at the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra recently, this act of terrorism had a strategic purpose. First, even 160,000 US troops cannot provide security to the whole country.

The guerrillas are announcing that if they are prevented from operating in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad, they will just shift operations to Samarra (an hour's drive due north of Baghdad) or Tuz Khurmato.

Moreover, they are saying that they are just as capable of waving a red flag in front of the Shiite bull even if they aren't in Baghdad. Thus, they hit a sacred Shiite shrine again at Samarra. And Tuz Khurmato is a largely Shiite Turkmen city of some 63,000, surrounded by villages with a similar composition, like the one that was blown up Saturday. Although Turkmen Shiites had in earlier decades been removed from the formal, clerically-dominated Shiism of Najaf, practicing instead a folk religion, in the 1990s Ayatollah Muhammad Sadiq al-Sadr reached out to them and brought many of them into orthodox Twelver Shiism.

Arab Shiites now feel solidarity with them, and on occasion young cleric Muqtada al-Sadr has sent Mahdi Army fighters up to protect them. The Badr Corps of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council has also attempted to attract their loyalty. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki denounced the bombing as the work of Sunni extremists who declare that Shiite Muslims are actually infidels.

KERKUK, Tuz Hurmatu - At least 105 people were killed and 150 were injured Saturday when a truck bomb devastated a crowded Turkmen market and demolished many homes in Emerli, Tuz Hurmatu.

Emerli, 130 Km south of Kerkuk, is a town of 26,000, Shiites from Iraq's Turkmen ethnic population.

Iraq: Kurdistan Security Forces Torture Detainees

Regional Government Must End Detainee Abuse and Violations of Due Process

(New York, July 3, 2007) – Kurdistan security forces in northern Iraq routinely torture and deny basic due-process rights to detainees, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

Human Rights Watch urges the Kurdistan Regional Government to end torture and ill-treatment of detainees in the custody of the security services. The Kurdish authorities should treat all detainees according to international standards and ensure their right to due process and fair trials.

New York Turkmen Institute hosted the chairman of Iraqi Turkmen Front Sadettin Ergeç in New York.

Ergeç briefed the audience about the situation of Turkmens in Türkmeneli at the meeting organized by New York Turkmen Institute and ATAA in New York.

Ergeç emphasized that the adoption of the Iraqi constitution was a mistake and said Iraqi Turkmens were not granted the rights they deserved.

"Kerkük, a Turkmen city by all means, is under intense pressure and the efforts exerted to alter the demographic structure of the city aiming to affect the outcome of the referendum in favor of the Iraqi Kurds were successful", Ergeç said.

"We will use all the rights at our disposition and continue our struggle. Our primary goal is to save our capital Kerkük. An unwanted outcome in Kerkük will cause the Turkmen land to be divided and Turkmen community to collapse", said Ergeç.

Ergeç said that they wanted at least Kerkük to have a special status. Ergeç called to Iraqi Turkmen for solidarity and, "Today we are in the midst of a national struggle for territory, for existence."

Ergeç said their talks with the U.S and UN officials in Washington D.C and New York took place in a positive atmosphere.

IRAQI TURKMENS APPEAL TO THE EUROPEAN UNION POLITICIANS & DECISION MAKERS

The Turkmens are the third main ethnic group in Iraq and the second main ethnic group in the north of Iraq. Their population is estimated at 3 million (12% of the Iraqi population).

Northern Iraq has been the homeland of the Iraqi Turkmens for over a millennium. The Turkmen region TURKMENELI lies between the Arab and Kurdish regions of Iraq, it stretches from Tel Afer in northern Iraq near the Syrian border to Mendeli near the Iranian border. The Turkmen population in Iraq is concentrated in the Provinces of Musul, Erbil, Kerkuk, Salaheddin, Dyala and Baghdad. Their biggest concentration is in Kerkuk, their capital city and main cultural centre since more than 800 years. Turkmens have played a constructive and important role in Mesopotamia (Iraq) where they established states and principalities and governed the region during centuries.

Since the creation of the Iraqi State in 1921 as a consequence of World War One which caused the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the inclusion of the actual north of Iraq (Musul Vilayati) into the Iraqi State, the Turkmens are systematically discriminated, marginalized and oppressed in Iraq for geopolitical and economical reasons as the Turkmen region contains huge oil and gas reserves, concentrated around Kerkuk, Khanaqin and Aynzala. For these economical and geopolitical reasons the successive Iraqi governments have tried to assimilate the Turkmens and purposely underestimated their number and true representation in Iraq, considering them as a small minority!

Since the occupation of Iraq by the Anglo-American forces on 9th April 2003 the situation of the Turkmens has deteriorated even more and more dramatically as a result of the U.S. decision to allow the Kurdish parties (KDP and PUK) and their militia to penetrate, occupy and control Kerkuk and all other important Turkmen towns and cities of the Turkmen region, as a reward for their collaboration during the invasion of Iraq. Since then, the Turkmens are subjected to even harsher policies of discrimination, marginalization and oppression, but this time by the Kurdish Parties which are now controlling the entire north of Iraq and for the same economical and geopolitical reasons.

The Kurds claim that Kerkuk is a Kurdish city; they are now actively busy kurdifying it, their aim is to annex Kerkuk to the Kurdish Autonomous Region in order to benefit alone from its oil and gas wealth. To achieve this goal the Kurdish parties have brought over 600.000 Kurds from the Kurdish autonomous region as well as from Syria, Iran and Turkey and settled them in Kerkuk and its surroundings, some of them in the houses vacated by fleeing Arabs, some others in government buildings, military camps, military personnel housing and compounds in and around Kerkuk and the remaining are still waiting in their makeshift houses and slums established on the lands belonging to the Turkmens. All of this is in preparation to annex Kerkuk to the Kurdish region through a referendum at the end of 2007 called for by the infamous Article 140, which was conceived and written by the Kurds and which has been incorporated under the pressure of their lobby in the “New Iraqi Constitution”.

For the above reasons, Turkmens denounce the Kurdish hegemony in the north of Iraq as well as Kurdish influence and manipulations of Iraqi politics since 2003, they reject Article 140, they are against the annexation of Kerkuk and other Turkmen town and cities to the Kurdish Autonomous Region, they demand the revision of the New Iraqi Constitution in order to be recognized as the third main community in Iraq, with rights equal to those obtained by the Arabs and the Kurds.

The Turkmens, being more vulnerable today than ever before in their long history in Iraq, are calling on the European Union and the United Nations asking their urgent help, support and protection in order to obtain their rights, achieve their objectives and preserve the existence of their community and their culture in Iraq.

IRAQI TURKMENS WILL BE DEMONSTRATING AGAINST ARTICLE 140 IN BRUSSELS

PRESS RELEASE

IRAQI TURKMENS IN BELGIUM AND IN THE NETHERLANDS
WILL HOLD A DEMONSTRATION IN FRONT OF THE BRUSSELS PARLIAMENT IN BRUSSELS, BELGIUM ON 2nd JULY 2007

30th June 2007

Representatives of the Iraqi Turkmens in Belgium and in the Netherlands will hold a demonstration in front of the Brussels Capital Parliament, 69, rue Lombard, 1000 Brussels - where the Kurdish institute and Kurdish cultural centre in Belgium are holding a conference hosted by the Flemish socialist party sp.a-spirit - on Monday 2nd July 2007 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm.

The subject of this conference is: “Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution: the referendum for the status of KERKUK and other contested territories in Iraq”. These so-called ‘contested territories’ are territories situated mainly in TURKMENELI (the Turkmen Region in the north of Iraq) they also include the city of KERKUK.

Since the invasion of Iraq by the Anglo-American forces in March 2003 the Kurdish parties and their militia have been authorised to penetrate, occupy and control most of the Turkmen towns and cities in the north of Iraq beginning with the city of Kerkuk which they have almost completely kurdified.

The aim of this demonstration is:

1- To denounce the hegemony of the Kurdish parties who are controlling the entire Turkmen Region and the city of KERKUK and who are marginalizing and discriminating against the Turkmens

2- To reject Article 140 that was written by the Kurds and was added to the new Iraqi constitution to allow them to annex KERKUK to the Kurdish Autonomous Region

3- To demand equal rights for the Turkmens in Iraq: equal to those of their Arab and Kurdish compatriots. The Turkmens are one of the three main communities in Iraq together with the Arabs and the Kurds; they are the second main community in the north of Iraq, notwithstanding this they continue to be marginalized and are considered as “a minority” and as “second class citizens”.

4- To demand a special status for KERKUK, similar to that of the capital BAGHDAD, as it was specified in Iraq’s provisional constitution which clearly stated that “KERKUK and BAGHDAD would have a special status and would not be part of any regional or federal state.

5- In the case of a “Federal Iraq”: to demand regional autonomy for the Turkmens and the creation of a “Federal State of Turkmeneli” as a Homeland and a Safe Haven for the Turkmens where they can administer themselves and protect their lives and preserve their identity and culture.

ITF leader Sadettin Ergeç evaluates recent events

ITF President Dr. Sadettin Ergeç:
WE HAVE TURKEY BEHIND US!
Yavuz Selim DEMİRAĞ

Iraq Turkmen Front (ITF) Leader Sadettin Ergeç evaluating the recent events answered the threats. Ergeç emphasized that the Kirkuk referendum must be cancelled and requested that for Iraq's solidarity a dependable consensus be carried out under the supervision of UN and Turkey. Read more....

Kurds see pressures mounting on KERKUK

"Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, with a population of 1.8 million, straddles the Tigris River on a grassy, windswept plain in the country's north. "

Tuz Khurmato: Sarha Bridge destroyed

2nd June 2007 -

AP Hadi Mizban Photo

The Sarha Bridge, a major bridge near the Turkmen town of Tuz Khurmato on the Chinchal river some 150 km north of Baghdad has been destroyed early on Saturday. "Gunmen bombed this strategic and important bridge and caused a great deal of damage, cutting the road between Kerkuk and Baghdad," Colonel Abbas Mohammed Amin, police chief in Tuz Khurmatu, said.

Two Turkmens among the five Iraqi journalists killed since May 26th 2007

Reporters Without Borders said four Iraqi journalists had been killed by armed groups since May 26.

That count did not include an Associated Press Television News cameraman, who was shot to death Thursday during clashes in a Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad.

According to the group, police said the body of Aidan Abdullah al-Jamiji, who was in charge of Kirkuk television's Turkomen-language section and a well-known local musician, was found on May 26 in the trunk of his car, which been torched and dumped near a cemetery in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Two days later, Mahmoud Hassib al-Kassab, the editor of the weekly Al-Hawadith newspaper and a member of a local Turkoman group, was shot to death outside his home in the northern part of Kirkuk.

Abdul-Rahman al-Issawi, a 34-year-old journalism professor at Baghdad university and a contributor to several newspapers, was killed Tuesday along with seven family members, when gunmen stormed into his home west of Fallujah and opened fire.

Nizar al-Radhi, 38, an employee of the independent news agency Voices of Iraq and correspondent since last year for Radio Free Iraq, was shot to death and several of his colleagues were wounded Wednesday in a drive-by shooting as they were leaving a news conference outside the city hall of Amarah, southeast of Baghdad.

Saif M. Fakhry, a 26-year-old Associated Press Television News cameraman, was shot to death Thursday as he was walking to a mosque during clashes in the Sunni neighborhood of Amariyah in Baghdad, although his death was not included in the Reporters Without Borders statement.

Turkmen journalist killed in Kerkuk

Gunmen Shoot Ethnic Turkmen Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Outside his Home

By Issam Tareq Kerkuk,

Unidentified gunmen killed the editor-in-chief of a weekly newspaper published in Kerkuk in front of his house in the predominantly-Turkoman neighborhood of al-Musalla, northern Kerkuk, a police source said."Mahmoud Hassib al-Qassab, the editor of al-Hawadeth weekly, was an ethnic Turkoman and the fourth journalist to be killed in Kerkuk this month," the source told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Qassab was also the leader of the Movement to Rescue Turkomans.

Al-Hawadeth was the first newspaper published in Kerkuk in 1962.
It stopped for a while but Qassab had it re-issued after 2003.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said at least 104 journalists have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, making Iraq the deadliest conflict for the press.

About four in five journalist deaths there have been Iraqis.

STATUS OF KERKUK

Aljazeera.net reported that KERKUK may become a “region” –- unaffiliated with Kurdistan or the rest of Iraq -– for the next half-decade until a decision is made on its final status.

Aljazeera.net quoted a Turkmen deputy, 'Abbas al-Bayyati, who said that the “constitutional revision committee” prefers a solution that will temporarily alter the status of KERKUK until a final referendum can be effectuated in a better political context.

KERKUK is one of the main issues preventing the Iraqi legislature from reaching an agreement over a proposed bundle of constitutional revisions.

Protests by TURKMENS and ARABS have made the application of article 140 of the Iraqi constitution (relating to the status of Kirkuk) extremely difficult. According to al-Bayyati, a decision is likely to be reached whereby Kirkuk becomes a “region” for the next 5-7 years until a popular referendum is possible and carries less risks of instability.

Turkmens in New York area marched in the traditional "Turkish Parade" organized by the Federation of Turkish-American Associations held in Manhattan, New York, on Saturday May 20, 2007.

During the march, Turkmens expressed concerns that their rights in Iraq have been underestimated by the Iraqi government. They protested the injustice and suffering that they have been facing so far in their homeland.

They also asked their Turkish brothers in Turkey for more solidarity and for support to their democratic endeavors in Kirkuk. click for more photos

An Iraqi-born artist sculpts his experience of Home
Exhibit aims to foster healing, and celebrate the beauty of Iraq.

Thousands of miles from his homeland, Najim H. Chechen stands surrounded by his mother, sisters, nieces, nephews and neighbors. They¹re sculpted in terracotta these figures now on exhibit at the Pomegranate Gallery on Greene Street in Soho. The women are modeled impressionistically in the warm brick colors of terra cotta, They are 4 inches to 12 inches high and often dressed in the graceful, billowy robes of the desert. A few figures represent friends and on a nearby table three whirling dervishes are serenely engaged in the graceful turning and mystical dance of the Sufi. In front, a fellow Sufi flutist all dressed in white , is blissfully creating the mood on his slender reedflute. Read more...

More Pictures

ITF LEADER SADETTIN ERGEC MET WITH TURKISH FOREIGN MINISTER ABDULLAH GUL

GUL MEETS WITH TURKMEN LEADER, DISCUSSES RISING TENSION IN IRAQ

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul yesterday met with Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITF) leader Sadettin Ergec to discuss the rising tension in Iraq.

Speaking afterwards, Ergec said that he had met with Gul to thank him for Ankara’s steps to support Iraq’s unity, adding that Gul had further pledged all necessary moral and political support.

Asked about Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s remarks saying that Ankara wouldn’t allow a fait accompli in Kirkuk, Ergec said that he believes this is Turkey’s political view. Asked about a possible Turkish intervention in the region, Ergec stressed that he and Gul had talked about moral and political support only.
In related news, Gul is expected to pay an official visit to Washington next month. He will meet with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during his stay to discuss Iraq, the terrorist PKK, and the Middle East. turkmenfriendship.blogspot.com

6 killed in Kirkuk bombings

May 17, 2007, 01:08 AM

BAGHDAD, May 16 (UPI) — Three attacks claimed six lives near Kirkuk in northern Iraq Wednesday, officials said. Iraq police said the victims of one bomb included a municipality chief and another member of Riyadh municipality, according to KUNA, the Kuwait news agency.

In a second attack, unidentified gunmen hit a vehicle on the Kirkuk-Baghdad Road, killing three passengers and abducting two others, a police source told KUNA. In the third incident, a bomb set off by unknown militants killed an official at a health center in Bankija village.

Meanwhile, an Iraqi police officer was wounded when his patrol came under a bomb attack in southwest of Kirkuk. Earlier, Wednesday, Iraqi police northeast of Baghdad reversed themselves and said a bomb that killed 32 people a day earlier did not contain chlorine gas. The blast Tuesday in a parked car near a market in the village of Abu Saydah about 25 miles northeast of Baquba also injured more than 60 people, Alalam reported.

Initial reports were that doctors at a local hospital attributed victims' burns to the use of poison gas, a BBC correspondent reported. However, police later denied there had been chlorine involved, Alalam said.

Iraq: Kurdish Region Under Increasing Threat

By Kathleen Ridolfo

May 16, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Two high-profile bomb attacks targeting Kurdish institutions this month have drawn attention to security in the region, which had escaped much of the violence plaguing other areas in Iraq. But threats against the Kurds from Al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups have been growing. Read more.....

KURDISH LIST AGREES TO POSTPONE IMPLEMENTATION OF ARTICLE 140 2007/05/15

Sami al-Askari, member of Iraqi parliament and advisor to the Iraqi prime minister, said that Iraqi government has reached an agreement with Kurdistan Alliance to postpone the implementation of article 140 of the Iraqi constitution. "The Kurdistan Alliance has sort of agreed to delay the implementation of article 140 that calls for normalizing the situation in the city (Kirkuk)," Askari said and he believed that, "This article can not be implemented now, because it has a deadline that ends in the end of 2007."

Askari said that some factions have suggested to postpone the implementation for one year and other factions have asked for a longer time under the current circumstance. This might be supported by the United Nation that will supervise the referendum in the province if it confirms that the organization can not do it. turkmenfriendship.blogspot.com

THE UNDERMINING OF THE TURKMEN IDENTITY IN IRAQ

QUESTIONS OF THE TURKMENS TO MR. MASSOUD BARZANI

Brussels, 8th May 2007 - European Parliament

Mr. Massoud Barzani, President of the Kurdish Regional Government 'exchanged views' with Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee at the European Parliament

Statement on the elections in the governorates

There is no doubt that the elections for the provincial councils and the parliamentary elections in Iraq since the downfall of Saddam, has witnessed violations, extraordinary in some governorates and the governorate of Kerkuk in particular , after exposure to a new demographic change in the past four years by the exodus of thousands of families from the northern governorates. Read more.....

What Mr. M Barzani said on 6th April 2007

MEETING FOR KIRKUK AND THE UNITY OF IRAQ

DEMONSTRATION IN KERKUK

Demonstrators carry a banner during a protest in Kerkuk
May 6, 2007

REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed (IRAQ)

Dozens of demonstrators held a rally demanding the release of their relatives who were arrested during joint raids by the U.S. and Iraqi forces.

A recent United Nations report accuses local authorities of torturing and ill-treating detainees. Hundreds have been held "for prolonged periods, some for several years" in the Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq without referral to an investigative judge or without any charges being brought against them.

Kırımoğlu, New York’ta Türk Toplumu Temsilcileriyle Buluştu

Iraqi Turkmen Martyrs Monument' was unveiled in Ankara

NYTI publications in Turkish

KERKUK: Twin bomb attacks have killed at least 85 people and wounded more than 180

KERKUK: U.S. soldiers shot a 68-year old Turkmen

Turkmens commemorate their martyrs of 14th July 1959 massacre by Kurds