Official name	Kirkuk
Native name	كركوك
Pushpin map	Iraq
Pushpin label position
Pushpin map caption	Kirkuk's location in Iraq
Subdivision type	Country
Subdivision name	Iraq
Subdivision type1	Governorate
Subdivision name1	Kirkuk
Established title	Settled
Population as of	2009 Est.
Population total	850 787
Timezone	GMT +3
Timezone dst	GMT +4
Coordinates display	inline,title
Coordinates type	type:city_region:IQ

Kirkuk (also spelled Karkuk or Kerkuk; , Kurdish: Kerkûk/که‌رکووک, , ) is a city in Iraq and the capital of Kirkuk Governorate.

It is located at 35.47°N, 44.41°E, in the Iraqi governorate of Kirkuk, 236 kilometres (146 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad. Kirkuk city lies 83 km south of Arbil, 149 km southeast of Mosul, 97 km west of Sulaymaniyah, and 116 km northeast Tikrit

It stands on the site of the ancient Assyrian capital of Arrapha, which sits near the Khasa River on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement (Kirkuk Citadel). Arrapha reached great importance under the Assyrians in the 10th and 11th centuries BC. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires—Assyria, Babylonia, and Media—which controlled the city at various times.

Historically, the city has always been considered by Kurds and Turkmens as a cultural capital. It was named the "capital of Iraqi culture" by the ministry of culture in 2010.

Etymology

The ancient name of Kirkuk was Arraphka. During the Parthian era, a Korkura is mentioned by Ptolemy, which is believed to refer either to Kirkuk or to the site of Baba Gurgur three miles (5 km) from the city. Under Greek reign it was known as Karkha D-Bet Slokh, which means 'Citadel of the House of Seleucid' in Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Fertile Crescent in that era.

The region around Kirkuk was known during the Parthian and Sassanid periods as Garmakan, which in Kurdish means the 'Land of Warmth' or the 'Hot Land'. In the modern Kurdish language, "Garm" means warmth; the name is still used by the Kurds in the form Garmian with the same meaning.

And from the 7th century, when Muslim Arabs conquered the area, up to the medieval era, Arab writers simply used the name Kirkheni (citadel) to refer to the city. Some Arabs used the names Bajermi or Jermakan

The small ''Hurrian kingdom of Arraphka' of which modern Kirkuk was the capital, was situated along the southeastern edge of the area under Aryan Mittanian domination. From 1500 to 1360 BC all kings of Assyria were vassals of kingdom of Mittani.

The city reached great prominence in the 10th and 11th centuries BC under Assyrian rule. However in 6th BC, Assyria was conquered by a union of Medes, remaining Hurrian-related tribes, and Babylonians.

Turkmen immigration

Turkmens migrated to Iraq during the Umayyads and Abbasid eras as military recruits. Considerable Turkmen settlement began during the Seljuq era when Toghrul entered Iraq in 1055 with his army composed mostly of Oghuz Turks. Kirkuk remained under the control of the Seljuq Empire for 63 years. The Turkmen settlement in Kirkuk was further expanded later during the Ottoman Era, when people were brought to the city from Turkey. Tuzhurmati has been one of the historical Turkmen settlement in Iraq.

Discovery of oil

In 1927 a huge oil gusher was discovered at Baba Gurgur ("St. Blaze" or father blaze in Turkmen and Kurdish) near Kirkuk. The Kirkuk oil field was brought into use by the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC) in 1934. The field has remained the basis of northern Iraqi oil production with over ten billion barrels (1.6 km³) of proven remaining oil reserves as of 1998. After about seven decades of operation, Kirkuk still produces up to one million barrels a day, almost half of all Iraqi oil exports.

Some analysts believe that poor reservoir-management practices during the Saddam Hussein years may have seriously, and even permanently, damaged Kirkuk's oil field. One example showed an estimated of excess fuel oil being reinjected. Other problems include refinery residue and gas-stripped oil. Fuel oil reinjection has increased oil viscosity at Kirkuk making it more difficult and expensive to get the oil out of the ground.

Overall, between April 2003 and late December 2004 there were an estimated 123 attacks on Iraqi energy infrastructures, including the country's 7,000 km-long pipeline system. In response to these attacks, which cost Iraq billions of US dollars in lost oil-export revenues and repair costs, the US military set up the Task Force Shield to guard Iraq's energy infrastructure and the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Oil Pipeline in particular. In spite of the fact that little damage was done to Iraq's oil fields during the war itself, looting and sabotage after the war ended was highly destructive and accounted for perhaps eighty percent of the total damage.

The discovery of vast quantities of oil in the region after World War I provided the impetus for the annexation of the former Ottoman Wilayah of Mosul (of which the Kirkuk region was a part), to the Iraqi Kingdom, established in 1921. Since then and particularly from 1963 onwards, there have been continuous attempts to transform the ethnic make-up of the region.

Pipelines from Kirkuk run through Turkey to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea and were one of the two main routes for the export of Iraqi oil under the Oil-for-Food Programme following the Gulf War of 1991. This was in accordance with a United Nations mandate that at least 50% of the oil exports pass through Turkey. There were two parallel lines built in 1977 and 1987.

1970 Autonomy Agreement

On paper, the Autonomy Agreement of March 11, 1970, recognized the legitimacy of Kurdish participation in government and Kurdish language teaching in schools. However, it reserved judgment on the territorial extent of Kurdistan, pending a new census. Such a census, according to Kurds would surely have shown a solid Kurdish majority in the city of Kirkuk and the surrounding oilfields, as well as in the secondary oil-bearing Kurdish area of Khanaqin, south of the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah (Kurdish: Sîlemanî). A census was not scheduled until 1977, by which time the autonomy deal was dead. In June 1973, with Ba'ath-Kurdish relations already souring, the guerrilla leader Mullah Mustafa Barzani laid formal claim to the Kirkuk oilfields.

Baghdad interpreted this as a virtual declaration of war, and, in March 1974, unilaterally decreed an autonomy statute. The new statute was a far cry from the 1970 Manifesto, and its definition of the Kurdish autonomous area explicitly excluded the oil-rich areas of Kirkuk, Khanaqin and Shingal/Sinjar. In tandem with the 1970–1974 autonomy process, the Iraqi regime carried out a comprehensive administrative reform, in which the country's sixteen provinces, or governorates, were renamed and in some cases had their boundaries altered. The old province of Kirkuk was split in half. The area around the city itself was named At-Ta'mim() ("nationalization"), and its boundaries were redrawn to give an Arab majority.

According to Human Rights Watch, from the 1991 Gulf War until 2003, the former Iraqi government systematically expelled an estimated 500.000, Kurds and some Assyrians from Kirkuk and other towns and villages in this oil-rich region. Most have settled in the Kurdish-controlled northern provinces. Meanwhile, the Iraqi government resettled Arab families in their place in an attempt to reduce the political power and presence of ethnic minorities, a process known as Arabization.

The "Arabization" of Kirkuk and other oil-rich regions is not a recent phenomenon. Successive governments have sought at various times to reduce the ethnic minority populations residing there since the discovery of significant oil deposits in the 1920s. By the mid-1970s, the Ba'ath Party government that seized power in 1968 embarked on a concerted campaign to alter the demographic makeup of multi-ethnic Kirkuk. The campaign involved the massive relocation of tens of thousands of ethnic minority families from Kirkuk, Sinjar, Khanaqin, and other areas, transferring them to purpose-built resettlement camps. This policy was intensified after the failed Kurdish uprising in March 1991. Those expelled included individuals who had refused to sign so-called "nationality correction" forms, introduced by the authorities prior to the 1997 population census, requiring members of ethnic groups residing in these districts to relinquish their Kurdish or Assyrians identities and to register officially as Arabs. The Iraqi authorities also seized their property and assets; those who were expelled to areas controlled by Kurdish forces were stripped of all possessions and their ration cards were withdrawn.

Kirkuk after 2003

American and British military forces led an invasion of Iraq in March 2003, driving Saddam Hussein and his Ba'ath Party from power. A caretaker government was created until the establishment of a democratically-elected government.

Since April 2003, thousands of internally displaced Kurds have returned to Kirkuk and other Arabized regions to reclaim their homes and lands which have since been occupied by Arabs from central and southern Iraq.

Under the supervision of chief executive of Coalition Provisional Authority L. Paul Bremer, a convention was held on May 24, 2003 to select the first City Council in the history of this oil-rich, ethnically divided city. Each of the city's four major ethnic groups was invited to send a 39-member delegation from which they would be allowed to select six to sit on the City Council. Another six council members were selected from among 144 delegates to represent independents social groups such as teachers, lawyers, religious leaders and artists.

Kirkuk's 30 members council is made up of five blocs of six members each. Four of those blocs are formed along ethnic lines- Kurds, Arabs, Assyrian and Turkmen- and the fifth is made up of independents. Turkmen and Arabs complained , however, that Kurds hold five of the seats in the independent block. They are also frustrated that their only representative at the council's helm was an assistant mayor whom they considered pro-Kurdish. Abdul Rahman Mustafa (), a Baghdad-educated lawyer was elected mayor by 20 votes to 10. The appointment of an Arab, Ismail Ahmed Rajab Al Hadidi (), as deputy mayor went some way towards addressing Arab concerns.

On June 30, 2005, through a secret direct voting process, with the participation of the widest communities in the province and despite all the political legal security complexities of this process in the country generally and in Kirkuk in particular, Kirkuk witnessed the birth of its first elected Provincial Council. The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq IECI approved and announced the outcomes of this process, which filled the 41 seats of Kirkuk Provincial Council as follows:

26 seats 367 List Kirkuk Brotherhood List KBL

8 seats 175 List Iraqi Turkmen Front ITF

5 seats 299 List Iraqi Republic Gathering

1 seats 178 List Turkmen Islamic Coalition

1 seats 289 List Iraqi National Gathering

The new Kirkuk Provincial Council started its second turn on March 6, 2005. Its inaugural session was dedicated to the introduction of its new members, followed by an oath ceremony supervised by Judge Thahir Hamza Salman, the Head of Kirkuk Appellate Court.

Future of Kirkuk

Barham Salih, Prime Minister for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Regional Government said that Kirkuk was originally a Kurdish city; it belonged to Kurds rather than to the Iraqi government, and only its oil made it a source of tension and that's why "We have a claim to Kirkuk rooted in history, geography and demographics. This is a recipe for civil war if you don't [address its governance] right".

According to the Kurds, the conquerors of Kurdistan have tried to destroy the numerous Kurdish emirates one after the other. Apart from their historical claim for Kirkuk, the Kurds invoke Article 58 of the Administration for the state of Iraq for the transitional period, also known as Administrative Law of March 8, 2004 which is considered the interim constitution of Iraq by the now-dissolved Iraqi Governing Council. Article 58 states in part: The Iraqi Transitional Government shall act expeditious measures to remedy the injustice caused by the previous regime's practice in the demographic character of certain regions, including Kirkuk, by deporting and expelling them from their place of residence and forcing migration in and out of the region.

A referendum on whether Kirkuk province should become part of Iraqi Kurdistan was due to be held in November 2007 but has been delayed repeatedly, and currently has no firm date. In December 2007, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unscheduled visit to Kirkuk before proceeding to Baghdad, where she called on Iraqi leaders to urgently implement a national reconciliation roadmap.

Sights

Ancient architectural monuments of Kirkuk include the citadel, the qishla, the Prophet Daniel's Tomb, and the market Bazari Pirehmerd. The archaeological sites of Qal'at Jarmo and Yorgan Tepe are found at the outskirts of the modern city. In 1997, there were reports that the government of Saddam Hussein "demolished Kirkuk's historic citadel with its mosques and ancient church".

The architectural heritage of Kirkuk sustained serious damage during the World War I (when some pre-Muslim Christian monuments were destroyed) and, more recently, during the Iraq War. Simon Jenkins reported in June 2007 that "eighteen ancient shrines have been lost, ten in Kirkuk and the south in the past month alone".

Climate

Kirkuk experiences a hot semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification BSh) with extremely hot and dry summers and cool, rainy winters.

Notable people from Kirkuk

Hijri Dede (Kurdish poet)

Rafiq Hilmi (a Kurdish poet, writer and academic)

Adnan Karim (Kurdish musician)

Younis Mahmoud (captain of the Iraqi soccer team)

Ali Mardan (Kurdish musician)

Mama Risha (prominent member of the Peshmerga)

Bakr Sidqi (Kurdish Iraqi general)

Sheikh Rezza Talabani (Kurdish poet)

Mehmet Türkmehmet (Turkish soccer player)

Hussen Ali (Kurdish musician)

Sister cities

Arbil Mosul

See also

Kirkuk (Chaldean Archdiocese)

Tomb of Daniel

References

External links

Iraq Image - Kirkuk Satellite Observation

Human Rights Watch Report: Kurdish Autonomy and Arabization, 1993

Human Rights Developments in Government-controlled Iraq, 2001

IRAQ: PEOPLE COME FIRST, 2003

International Humanitarian Law Issues In A Potential War In Iraq, 2003

Amnesty International Report: Decades of human rights abuse in Iraq, 2003

Reversing Arabization of Kirkuk, 2004

Iraq: In Kurdistan, Land Disputes Fuel Unrest, 2004

German-kurdish homepage for politics and culture

Insurgents stir up strife in Kirkuk

Kurds flee Iraqi town, March 15, 2003; named Kurds' preferred capital

Key Targets in Iraq, Anthony H. Cordesman, CSIS, February 1998; information about the oil resources and facilities

Brief Summary of Kirkuk History

Kirkuk in Old Ages

Numerous research about Kirkuk

Category:Populated places established in the 3rd millennium BC Category:Assyria Category:Turkish communities outside Turkey Category:Fertile Crescent

James Gabriel was Grand Chief of the Mohawk community at Kanesatake (located near Oka, Quebec) from 1995 to 2004. His tenure in office was controversial, marked by bitter divisions between his supporters and opponents.

Background

The 1700-member community began holding elections for tribal office in 1991, following the Oka Crisis. A number of issues have increased political competition in the community.

Gabriel promoted opposition to drug trafficking and organized crime in Kanesatake. In his campaign against these, critics suggest he and supporters unjustly branded several community members as criminals. Gabriel agreed with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) that the community's tobacco stores (in which cigarettes of disputed origin were sold tax-free to non-natives) should be removed. With strong disagreement over this decision by other council and community members, a protracted dispute ensued which eventually involved both the provincial and federal authorities.

In a 2001 referendum, 61% of Kanesatake voters approved removal of Gabriel from office. He kept his position following his victory in a court appeal. The reasons for Gabriel's unpopularity in this period are disputed. His supporters in 2003-04 claim that he lost popularity by not adequately confronting organized crime, while his opponents claim his unpopularity resulted from his promotion of bill S-24 (see below)m which changed conditions for the settlement in relation to other levels of government.

Policing and conflict

In late 2003, Gabriel arranged with Canada's Indian Affairs Department for an emergency loan of $900,000 to the community's police force. Gabriel secretly hired aboriginal policemen as special forces for an anti-crime, drug raid. Opponents believed Gabriel intended to use these officers against the local cigarette dealers. (He informed his supporters on the band council about the planned actions, but not the three council members who opposed him.)

On January 12, 2004, Gabriel bypassed the Kanesatake Police Commission and led a force of 67 police officers to the local police station to take control. (The community's police chief, Tracy Cross, was not a supporter of Gabriel and opposed these actions). Many local residents resisted this effort, and a standoff resulted.

Gabriel's allies requested assistance from the Sûreté du Québec (SQ). The police had been involved in the prolonged 78-day Oka standoff of 1990 and not been able to keep control. Fearing renewed violence, the provincial authorities refused to send in the SQ. They negotiated an agreement by which the private forces were given safe passage out of the community. On the same night, Gabriel's house was burned down. The grand chief sought safety in the neighbouring community of Laval.

Disputes continued through 2004 over the leadership of the Kanesatake police force. Gabriel's status in the community after the raid was a matter of controversy in 2004-05. Some believe he was legitimately removed as Grand Chief in January 2004, while others (in and out of the community) rejected this interpretation. In any event, Gabriel was defeated 375 votes to 344 by Steven Bonspille in the June 26, 2005 election. The six band council members elected alongside Bonspille were Gabriel supporters, leading to difficult governance.

In early June 2005 the Sûreté du Québec Command testified to their understanding that the tobacco/drug raid was intended to replace both Police Chief Cross and the Police Commission. The S.Q. and RCMP Command had both argued with Gabriel against conducting the raid. They testified that it was poorly planned and that Gabriel relied on dubious evidence in his decisionmaking.

Some aboriginal groups in Canada, including the powerful Assembly of First Nations, have openly sided with Gabriel in this dispute, as has the Parti Québécois. Gabriel's supporters believe that the provincial government capitulated to organized crime in early 2004. His opponents argue that his rule over the community was heavy-handed and arbitrary. They said his efforts to stop the cigarette trade were an intrusion into accepted community practices.

S-24

Gabriel was involved in other controversy during his tenure as Grand Chief. He helped to negotiate the passage of S-24, a federal bill which, according to its backers, was meant to clarify the community's relationship to the federal government. Because Kanesatake is not a "reserve" but a "settlement", it has not been subject to the provisions of Canada's Indian Act. Opponents of S-24 believe that the bill was intended to reduce the community's autonomy.

A community referendum narrowly passed the bill by two votes. Many residents boycotted the electoral process entirely. Some believed Gabriel intended to convert Kanesatake into a municipality under Canada law. Such action would have increased the powers of the federal and provincial governments over the community.

Outsourcing control of finances

In 2002, Gabriel allowed the federal government to hire the private firm of PriceWaterhouseCoopers to assume control over the band's finances. (He claimed the decision was necessary in light of the band's $1.2 million dollar deficit).

Category:Aboriginal leaders in Quebec Category:Living people Category:Mohawk people