The Turkmen community of the semiautonomous Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq expects to increase their political representation in this Sunday’s high-stakes parliamentary elections.
Turkmen are a key element in the elections, lawmakers of the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITC) told Anadolu Agency (AA) ahead of the key vote in which the ITC is participating in a political list for the first time in 20 years.
The KRG offers Turkmen and other ethnic groups a quota for parliamentary representation. However, Turkmen only get one seat each from the cities of Irbil and Sulaymaniyah, and the ITC wants more seats, notably in Irbil, whose city center has the largest Turkmen population in Iraq after Kirkuk.
"This is not enough for us," said Aydın Maruf, the minister of the ITC’s Ethnic and Religious Formations Department. "Therefore, the ITC is competing in the elections with a full list."
Turkmen have been represented at the KRG Parliament with five lawmakers through the quota system, according to ITC candidate Imdat Terzi.
"The right to quota was brought up to the Iraqi federal court due to political clashes between the region’s parties and the court ruled to reduce it from five to one representative. That’s why the Iraqi Turkmen Front is attending the elections as one political list," Terzi said.
Maruf anticipates high voter support for ITC in the Sunday polls.
"We have been serving for years without discriminating between ethnic groups here, and we will continue to do so," he said, urging all Irbil residents to vote for the ITC. "We expect a new era to start in Irbil."
He believes the parliamentary vote is vital for both the KRG and Iraq, and will offer a "cutthroat" competition between the parties.
The ITC wants a government consisting of all ethnic groups and political parties in the region, Maruf said, noting that not excluding any groups from the government to ensure al-inclusive representation is "the best thing for region’s stability."
Turkmen are a Turkic-speaking minority whose total population is estimated to be some 3 million.
Northern Iraq’s minorities also complain of the extensive PKK presence in the region, most notably the terrorist group’s collaboration with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a dominant political party accused of giving more freedom of movement both in the city and rural parts of Sulaymaniyah to the PKK.
The PKK, which killed thousands in Türkiye, is a banned organization in Iraq but Türkiye wants its full recognition as a terrorist group. Tensions have been rising between Türkiye and the PUK since the PKK increased its attacks on Turkish troops.
Turkmen officials and the Iraqi Turkmen Front have expressed fear of attacks from the PKK and demanded the Baghdad government terminate the group’s existence.