Shafaq News- Kirkuk

Dozens of residents from Taza and Bashir protested in Iraq’s Kirkuk province on Monday evening over reports that a Turkmen official in the provincial education directorate could be replaced by someone from another community.

The demonstrations were accompanied by threats to block the main road linking Baghdad and Kirkuk. They also followed reports that another person had been nominated to replace the directorate’s accounts chief, who is from Taza. Protester Kazim Al-Bayati told Shafaq News that demonstrators opposed the reported change and urged authorities to maintain a balance in the distribution of administrative posts among Kirkuk’s communities. Another protester, Abbas Tazli, said residents would take further action if authorities proceeded with the change.

Earlier today, Gharib Askar Al-Turkmani, a senior figure in Badr Organization and former parliamentary rapporteur, said a Turkmen director had been verbally assigned to head the directorate’s finance section. A written order issued on Monday assigned the same post to someone from another community, he explained, adding that the Turkmen community was entitled to the post and that the order raised serious questions about respect for the rights of Kirkuk’s communities, given existing disputes over representation and the distribution of administrative posts.

Al-Turkmani warned of demonstrations, sit-ins and civil disobedience if the issue went unresolved, saying those pressing the demands would use peaceful and lawful means to defend rights and entitlements he considered legitimate. Turkmen rights can neither be surrendered nor bargained away and everyone shares responsibility for distributing posts fairly, he said.

A separate power-sharing agreement in oil-rich Kirkuk rotates the governorship among the province’s Kurdish, Turkmen, and Arab communities. Provincial council member Sawsan Abdul Wahid Jaddoua said on Monday that the Iraqi Turkmen Front had two candidates for governor and that council members had received no formal notice of a vote date. Governor Mohammed Samaan Agha, who joined the federal cabinet as a minister of state in October, stated on October 28 that he would resign as governor if the council convened and selected a Turkmen successor in line with the agreed timetable.