# Persecution of Iraqi Turkmen in Ba'athist Iraq

The Persecution of Iraqi Turkmen in Ba'athist Iraq refers to the persecution of Iraqi Turkmen by the government Ba'athist Iraq, specifically under Saddam Hussein.

## History

The 1957 Iraqi census was recognized as the last reliable census before the Arabization policies of the Ba'ath regime. It recorded 567,000 Turkmen out of a total population of 6.3 million. This put them third, behind Arabs and Kurds.
Later censuses, in 1967, 1977, 1987 and 1997, were all recognized as highly unreliable, due to suspicions of Arabization by the various regimes in Iraq. The 1997 census claimed that there was 600,000 Iraqi Turkmen, while the total Iraqi population was 22,017,983. The 1997 census only allowed citizens to choose Arab or Kurdish. As selecting Kurdish also made them targets, many Iraqi Turkmen selected Arab. Throughout Ba'athist rule, many Iraqi Turkmen would register as Arabs in order to avoid being targeted.
After Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979, discrimination increased against Iraqi Turkmen. When Saddam Hussein first came to power, he ordered the execution of the highest Iraqi Turkmen community leaders, which was remembered as Turkmen Martyrs' Day. Arabization policies by the state also intensified. The Iraqi government first banned the Turkish language in 1972. Under Saddam Hussein, in the 1980s, further bans on the Turkish language were made and enforced, and Iraqi Turkmen were prohibited from speaking Turkish in public, in schools, and on the media. While Iraqi Turkmen were targets of several massacres, such as in 1924, 1946, and 1959, the Iraqi Ba'ath Party was responsible for the massacres on Iraqi Turkmen between 1979 until 2003. Notable massacres included the 1991 Altun Kupri massacre, the 1996 Erbil massacre, and the massacres during the Anfal campaign, which had also targeted and killed Iraqi Turkmen despite primarily targeting Kurds.
The Iraqi government expelled and displaced thousands of Iraqi Turkmen from their homes in northern Iraq and replaced them with Arab settlers. Iraqi Turkmen villages and towns were often destroyed to make space for Arab settlers, who were rewarded with land and money for settling in Iraqi Turkmen homes. The city of Kirkuk was one of the main targets for Arabization. Although the Iraqi Turkmen were not always expelled, Arab neighborhoods were established in their settlements, and the demographic balance changed as the Arab migrations continued and the Arab presence expanded.
Several presidential decrees and directives from state security and intelligence organizations had specifically focused on Iraqi Turkmen. On May 6, 1980, Iraqi Military Intelligence issued directive 1559, ordering the deportation of Iraqi Turkmen officials from Kirkuk. It instructed the Iraqi Army to "identify the places where Turkmen officials are working in governmental offices to deport them to other governorates in order to disperse them and prevent them from concentrating in this governorate". In addition, on 30 October 1981, the Revolution's Command Council issued decree 1391, with paragraph 13 noting that "this directive is specially aimed at Turkmen and Kurdish officials and workers who are living in Kirkuk".
When the Iraqi government began settling Palestinians in Turkmen and Kurdish houses in Kirkuk, Jalal Talabani advised Kurds and Iraqi Turkmen to put their differences aside and fight to retake their homes. It had been "only the fact that the regime in Baghdad was unquestionably worse that persuaded Turkmen to cooperate with the Kurdish national movement." A significant amount of Assyrians also put their differences with Kurds aside and joined the Kurdish forces against the government of Saddam Hussein.
Iraqi Turkmen who remained in their traditional settlements continued to face assimilation policies. School names, neighborhoods, villages, streets, markets, and mosques with Turkic names were changed to Arabic names. Many Iraqi Turkmen villages were demolished without being rebuilt, especially during the 1990s.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the cultural repression of Iraqi Turkmen was lifted, and the Iraqi Turkmen played a significant role in the De-Ba'athification and development of Iraq after Saddam Hussein. In 2003, most of the disputed territories of northern Iraq were captured by the Peshmerga, which began a revenge campaign against Arab settlers, ultimately reversing the Arabization of the Kurdish settlements and earning a brutal reputation to the point that Arab settlers would instantly flee as soon as the Peshmerga entered any settlement. In the Shia Turkmen village of Bashir, the Arab settlers remained. The top imam of Bashir claimed that it was because the Turkmen had no way to expel the Arabs, and the Arabs knew that the Peshmerga was not interested in coming to Bashir. The Arabs refused to leave without a court order, after which the Turkmen residents threatened that displaced Turkmen were planning a march back to Bashir in which every Arab that remained in the village would be killed. Before any clashes, the US hosted an agreement which only evicted the undocumented Arabs, though tensions persisted as the documented Arab settlers remained. Sunni Arab vigilante groups eventually began shooting Turkmen and sparked clashes, while tensions in other regions were high between Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, ban on the Iraqi Turkmen Front was lifted, and many of its members were elected into the Iraqi government. However, other social problems persisted, including sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shia Turkmen, the tension with Kurds due to overlapping goals, the continued tension with Arab settlers, as well as problems with the Iraqi government over its refusal to permit Iraqi Turkmen to form their own security force.
During the Iraqi Turkmen genocide by the Islamic State from 2014 to 2017, many of the Islamic State militants and leaders had been officers in the Iraqi Army under Saddam Hussein.