Hundreds of Arab and Turkmen protestors took to the streets of Iraq’s disputed northern oil city of Kirkuk Friday, charging that last month’s election had been riddled with fraud and demanding a re-run.
“No, no to federalism! No, no to fraud!”, chanted the demonstrators, who gathered in the city centre before heading south to march past the offices of the two main Kurdish parties.
Kurds want Kirkuk to be made the capital of an enlarged autonomous region, and thousands of Kurds who were displaced from the city under Saddam Hussein were allowed to vote two weeks ago.
“There are documents and plenty of evidence showing that fraud took place during the elections in Kirkuk,” said a statement which was distributed to protestors and signed by 16 Arab and Turkmen groups.
Among the signatories were the Ankara-funded Iraqi Turkmen Front, the Shiite religious party Dawa, and the movement of Shiite radical leader Moqtada Sadr.
“We ask for new elections to be held in Kirkuk to guarantee they are transparent, because Kirkuk is on the edge of a flaming pit,” the document said.
Turkmen, Dawa and Sadrists? An odd combination, although if you consider the fact that whoever controls Kirkuk controls the northern Iraqi oil, it is reasonable for the Shi`a (Dawa and the Sadrists are Shiite) and Turkmen, who want a united Iraq, to object to the Kurds’ attempt to hijack it.