Turkmens in Contested Oil-Rich Province to Boycott Iraq's National Census

Political parties representing the ethnic Turkmen population in the oil-rich province of Kirkuk said Thursday that they planned to boycott Iraq’s national census scheduled for October, throwing into question whether a count of people in the disputed province would resolve growing tensions there.

The Iraqi government has hoped the long-delayed census will conclusively determine the number of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens living in the province. It is set to be the basis for the creation of a list of eligible voters to take part in a referendum to determine Kirkuk’s future.
Since the United States-led invasion in 2003, Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens have competed for power in Kirkuk, a northern province that sits atop billions of barrels of oil reserves. That struggle has frequently spilled over into violence.

Unofficial government estimates say Kurds make up about 40 percent of the province’s population, Arabs about 28 percent and Turkmens about 22 percent, with Assyrian Christians and other groups making up the remainder.

Turkmens and Arabs say that the number of Kurds has swelled in recent years with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants and that a census now would be unfair. Most of the recent Kurdish arrivals never lived in Kirkuk, they contend, and arrived only to bolster the efforts of the Iraqi Kurdistan region to annex the province in order to gain access to its oil wealth.

New York Times