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Rezgar Ali: The people of Kirkuk are the
owners of Kirkuk 27.11.2006
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November 27, 2006
The head of a council that governs the multiethnic
and mainly Kurdish oil-rich province of Kirkuk in
Kurdistan (northern Iraq) has slammed remarks by
President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, who last week seemed
to hold out little hope for the likely outcome of a
referendum scheduled to take place in this province
to determine the future status of the city.
"Nobody has the right to make a decision on Kirkuk
and on the destiny of Kirkuk's people. The people of
Kirkuk are the owners of Kirkuk," Rezgar Ali, head
of the Kirkuk provincial council and a senior
official of President Jalal Talabani's Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was quoted as saying by
the Dogan News Agency (DHA).
Last week in Istanbul, at a committee meeting of the
Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Sezer
described the future status of Kirkuk as a source of
concern for Turkey. "We believe that the referendum
-- scheduled to be held at the end of 2007 for
determining Kirkuk's status in line with provisions
in the constitution -- will be controversial because
of the population influx into the city and that the
referendum will make the issue more difficult,"
Sezer said, in apparent reference to the more than
100,000 Kurds who have flocked to Kirkuk -- altering
the city's demographics in their favor -- since the
country's 2003 invasion by U.S.-led allies. |
The oil-rich city of Kirkuk
Photo:ekurd.net 2004 |
The former Iraqi president forced about 250,000
Kurdish residents to give up their homes to Arabs in
the 1970s, to "Arabize" the city and the region's
oil industry.
Ali brought to mind that a majority of Iraqis voted
in favor of a provision in the constitution that
says that a referendum should be held in the area to
determine Kirkuk's future. “That's why neither Sezer
nor anyone else has any right to make a statement
concerning the sensitive position of Kirkuk,” he was
quoted as saying by the agency.
“We believe that Kirkuk's future needs to be
determined via a formula on which all Iraqi groups
agree without deadline pressure. We believe the
United Nations may play a more active role in this
issue,” Sezer said at the time, voicing Ankara's
well-known willingness for the active and
constructive involvement of the United Nations to
reach a consensus among Iraqi groups before the 2007
referendum.
Earlier this month, the future status of Kirkuk
dominated visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's
talks with the Turkish leadership in Ankara.
Addressing Ankara's fears that Iraqi Kurds are
trying to take control of Kirkuk as part of their
push for an independent state on Turkey's border,
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged
power-sharing among the ethnic groups in Kirkuk.
On November, 21, Kurdistan region PM
Nechirvan Barzani
issued a statement criticizing the progress of
the committee formed to implement article 140 of the
constitution pertaining to the families expelled
from their homes in Kirkuk and other disputed territories under the
former regime.
In the statement Barzani noted that "The panel that
has been formed for the execution of article 140 of
the permanent Iraqi constitution? it is not
progressing perfectly.
In regards to objections raised by Iraqi's neighbors
against the implementation of the article, Barzani
said, "This is a constitutional article and only
relates to the Iraqi people."
turkishdailynews com.tr | Agencies
Kirkuk city is not under the full control of
Kurdistan Regional Government administration. A
referendum is to be held in late 2007 to decide
whether the oil-rich Kurdish province should be
annexed to the safe semiautonomous Kurdistan region
in Iraq's north.
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