Kirkuk’s nationalistic plot is halted by PUK

PUKMEDIA

Farms in Kirkuk

The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has halted a nationalistic plot in Kirkuk and returned the lands that an Iraqi army division had seized to the Kurdish and Turkmen owners. 

Following reports from several Kurdish and Turkmen farmers in Kirkuk that an Iraqi army division had raided their lands in the Topzawa village, Avesta Sheikh Mohammed, the director of the PUK's East Kirkuk Organization Center-18, told PUKMEDIA: "We hurried to meet their demands and resolved the issue through Khalid Shwani, the Iraqi Minister of Justice, who is from the PUK."

She continued: "The PUK is the guardian of the rights of all communities in Kirkuk and will not allow any narrow-minded Arab nationalistic views to be implemented and persecute other people in Kirkuk." 

The PUK stopped the Iraqi army division from occupying the land, and the farmers are still engaged in farming operations there today. It is reported that the Iraqi army division sought to occupy hundreds of dunams (one dunam is equal to 2500 square meters) of territory.

Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution was largely drafted to address the issue of the disputed territories between Erbil and Baghdad. In the provinces of Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Saladin, the former Iraqi Ba'ath regime made great efforts to Arabize the population, which was the cause of these disputes.

Kurdish farmers in Kirkuk and other disputed areas are occasionally attacked, and their land is taken by resettling Arabs who refuse to give up the lands that were allocated to them during the Ba'ath dictatorship in Iraq.



PUKMEDIA