Minorities in Iraq

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Minorities in Iraq include various ethnic and religious groups.

Kurds

Main article: Iraqi Kurdistan
Flag of the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq
Approximate map of the Kurdish-populated region of Iraq

The vast majority of Iraqi Kurds are Sunni Muslims, with Shia and Christian minorities.

Under the Kingdom of Iraq, Kurdish leader

Abdul-Karim Qassem distanced himself from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, he faced growing opposition from pro-Egypt officers in the Iraqi army. When the garrison in Mosul
rebelled against Qassem's policies, he allowed Barzānī to return from exile to help suppress the pro-Nasser rebels. By 1961, Barzānī and the Kurds began a full-scale rebellion.

When the

Al-Anfal campaign, a systematic genocide of the Kurdish people in Iraq, was launched. For this, Iraq was widely condemned by the international community, but was never seriously punished for oppressive measures, including the use of chemical weapons
against the Kurds, which resulted in thousands of deaths.

After the

Kurdistan Workers Party were located in the region. However, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam, brought renewed hope to the Kurds. The Kurds have since been working towards developing the area and pushing for democracy in the country. However, most Kurds overwhelmingly favor becoming an independent nation. "In the January 2005 Iraqi elections, 98.7 percent of Kurds voted for full independence rather than reconciliation with Iraq."[2]
Almost no other political or social group in the region is agreeable to the idea of Kurdish independence. Iraq's neighboring countries such as Turkey are particularly opposed to the movement because they fear that an independent Iraqi Kurdistan would strengthen Kurdish independence movements in their own territories.

Arabs and Kurds, the second great threat to Iraq's survival as a state after the growing sectarian conflict between Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites.[3]

Turkmen

Main article: Iraqi Turkmen
Flag of the Iraqi Turkmen
A map of Turkmeneli on a monument in Altun Kupri (Turkish: Altınköprü).

The Iraqi Turkmen are the third largest ethnic group in the country, after the Arabs and Kurds.[4][5][6][7] They are a branch of the Turkic peoples and adhere to that heritage and identity,[7] this is because most Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman are the descendants of the Ottoman soldiers, traders and civil servants who were brought into Iraq from Anatolia during the rule of the Ottoman Empire.[8][9][10] Since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman have found themselves increasingly discriminated against from the policies of successive regimes, such as the Kirkuk Massacre of 1923, 1947, 1959, and in 1979 when the Ba'ath Party discriminated against the community.[11] Although the Turks were recognized as a constitutive entity of Iraq (alongside the Arabs and Kurds) in the constitution of 1925, the Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman were later denied this status.[11]

According to the 1957 Iraqi census the Turkmen/Turkoman had a population of 567,000, accounting for 9% of the total Iraqi population.

Anglicized version of "Turkmeneli" – appears on a map of the region published by William Guthrie in 1785, however, there is no clear reference to Turkmeneli until the end of the twentieth century.[18] According to Khalil Osman there has been "a raft of federalist schemes" proposed by various Turkmen/Turkoman political parties.[17]

Iraqi Turkmen girl in traditional Turkish costume.
Bilingual sign (Arabic and Turkish) of a Turkmen village.

The Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman share close cultural and linguistic ties with

Turkish culture.[27]

Christians

Main article: Christianity in Iraq

Christianity has a presence in Iraq dating to the 1st century AD. The Christian community in Iraq is relatively small, and further dwindled due to the Iraq War to just several thousands. Most Christians in Iraq belong traditionally to Syriac Orthodox Church, Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, and are concentrated in small cities in the Nineveh Plains, such as Alqosh, Tel Keppe, Ankawa, and Bartella.

Assyrians

Main article: Assyrians in Iraq
Flag of the Assyrians

The

Ashurism). There are believed to be no more than 500,000 Assyrians remaining in Iraq,[28]
with a large concentration in the diaspora. They are Iraq's fourth largest ethnic group after the Arabs, the Kurds and the Iraqi Turkmen.

The Assyrian minority came under persecution during Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime. When Hussein first assumed power, the Assyrian population there numbered 2 million to 2.5 million. Many have fled to neighboring countries such as

Iraqi Christians have registered for temporary asylum in Syria.[29]
Assyrians have traditionally made good soldiers, during the Iran–Iraq War, many were recruited to the armies of both sides.

Currently, Assyrians face persecution from Kurds, as

Aqrah, etc.) and the forceful deportation and killing of Christians in that area.[30]

The Assyrian Security force Nineveh Plain Protection Units Currently run the security in many Towns and Villages in the Nineveh Plains

Armenians

Main article:
Armenians in Iraq

The

football clubs (Nadi Armeni) and other establishments. Armenian folk music and dance is admired in Iraq. Most Iraqi Armenians live in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra and their population is estimated at around 10,000 down from 70,000 before the 2003 invasion of Iraq.[31]

Other groups

Feylis

Main article:
Feylis

Feylis are a distance ethnic Kurdish group who live near the Iraq-Iran border, in

Wasit, Diyala, Maysan
. There are also big Feyli community in Baghdad. In the mid 1970s, Iraq expelled around 40,000 Feyli's who had lived for generations near Baghdad and Khanaqin, alleging that they were Iranian nationals. However, since 2003 many Feyli kurds have returned to Iraq and been granted Iraqi citizenship.

Jews

Main article: History of the Jews in Iraq

Although historically significant, the Jewish community of Iraq today is very small in number[citation needed]. Almost all Iraqi Jews were transferred to Israel in the early 1950s in Operation Ezra and Nehemiah.

Mandaeans

Main articles: Mandaeans and Mandaeism
Nasiriya, southern Iraq
-2016

Mandaeans, also known as

Iraqi Arabic
.

The Iraqi Mandaean community, in the pre-

1990 Gulf War period, was the most important in the world with 30,000–50,000[35] of the 70,000 total living in the country mainly in the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Mandaeans, although an ethnic and religious minority, consider themselves Iraqi and have supported the Iraqi nation patriotically. They were considered an economically successful community, and had achieved high levels in Iraqi society, and are held in high regard as silversmiths, goldsmiths, academics and poets.[36]

Marsh Arabs

Main article: Marsh Arabs

The Marsh Arabs or Ma'dãn are a group of Arabs who number 125,000 to 150,000 who live in the Mesopotamian Marshes in southern Iraq.

Kaka'is

Main article: Yarsanism

The Kaka'is are a small Kurdish religious group who located mainly in and around Kirkuk in northern Iraq.

Shabaks

Main article:
Shabak people

There are about 60,000–400,000 Shabaks in Iraq. They are an ethnic and religious minority, retaining their own distinct Pre Islamic religion. They are an Indo-European (Aryan) people and speak an Indo-European language with elements of Turkish and Arabic infused. The Shabak's origin are not well-known, many notables such as

Anastas Al-Karmali have argued that the Shabak People were of Kurdish origins. The Encyclopaedia of Islam's 'First Edition' from 1913-1936, states that the Shabaks are "a religious community of Kurdish origin in the wilāyet of Mawṣil."[37]

Despite having their own language and culture unique from other groups, Kurdish authorities have attempted to

KDP during a demonstration organized by the Democratic Shabak Coalition, a group which wants separate representation for the Shabak community.[38]

Roma (Gypsy)

Main article:
Romani people in Iraq

Iraq's

Kawliya
) ethnic minority was looked down upon as second-class citizens under Ba'ath party rule.

Ezidis

Main article:
Ezidi


Today, there are around 650,000 Yezidis in Iraq who live in northern parts of Iraq. All speak Kurdish with the exception of the two villages Bashiqa and Bahzani, located near Mosul.[39] Most Yezidis live in southern Kurdistan (Northern Iraq, the Sheikhan area near Mosul, the Sinjar mountains), southwestern Kurdistan (Northern Syria), northwestern Kurdistan (southeastern Turkey), as well as in Armenia, Georgia, Russia, the Ukraine, the USA, Germany and other countries of Western Europe.[40] the majority consider themselves ethnically Kurdish, although Yazidis are religiously distinct from Iraq's predominantly Sunni Kurdish population. Yezidism has roots in a western Pre-Zoroastrian religion[41][42]

Africans

Main article: Afro-Iraqis

The

Caliph in Baghdad. After the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime, Afro-Iraqis have once again begun to struggle for an improvement in their condition.[43]

Ajam (Persians)

Main article:
Ajam of Iraq

Baháʼís

Main article: Baháʼí Faith

Bedouin

Main article: Bedouin

Circassians

Main article: Circassians in Iraq

Assaults on minority Groups since 2003

  • In August 2014,
    Assyrians
    .
  • In total, 40 churches have been bombed since June 26, 2004.
  • August 10, 2009: Truck bombs kill at least 28 people in the Shabak village of Khazna, in Nineveh governorate[44]
  • June 20, 2009: Truck bomb kills at least 70 people in a Turkmen village near Kirkuk[45]
  • Chaldean Catholic Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was kidnapped on February 23, 2008. Three of his companions were also murdered during the kidnapping. His body was found in March, and an Iraqi Al-Qaeda leader, Ahmed Ali Ahmed, known as Abu Omar, was sentenced to death in May for this crime.[46][47]
  • January 9, 2008: 2 Assyrian churches bombed in Kirkuk.[citation needed]
  • January 6, 2008: 7 Assyrian churches bombed: three churches in Mosul and four in Baghdad.[48]
  • August 14, 2007:
    Bombing of Qahtaniya and Jazeera
    - killed 796 people and wounded 1,562, targeting the Yazidi minority.
  • June 4, 2007: 2 churches attacked, Ragheed Ganni, a priest, and three men were shot dead in church.[49]
  • October 2006: Orthodox priest, Boulos Iskander, kidnapped in Mosul and subsequently beheaded, and his arms and legs were cut off.[49][50]
  • January 29, 2006: 4 churches bombed.[citation needed]
  • January 2005: Syriac Catholic Archbishop of Mosul, Basile Georges Casmoussa, kidnapped on January 17 and released.[51]
  • December 7, 2004: 2 churches bombed.[48]
  • November 8, 2004: 1 church bombed.[citation needed]
  • October 16, 2004: 5 churches bombed.[48]
  • September 10 and 11th, 2004: 2 churches bombed.[citation needed]
  • August 1, 2004: 5 Assyrian and 1 Armenian churches bombed.[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-1-351-18881-4
    .
  2. ^ Viviano, Frank. "The Kurds in Control Archived 2007-12-01 at the Wayback Machine." National Geographic, January 2006 pg 26.
  3. Television New Zealand. Reuters. September 4, 2006. Archived from the original
    on September 20, 2011. Retrieved October 25, 2011.
  4. ISBN 978-0-7391-3380-4
    , the Turkmen are Iraq's third-largest ethnic group after the Arabs and Kurds
  5. ISBN 978-1-61535-637-9
    , The Turkic-speaking Turkomans/Turkmen are the third-largest ethnic group in Iraq after the Arabs and the Kurds.
  6. ^ "Minorities in Iraq Pushed to the brink of existence" (PDF). European Parliamentary Research Service. 2015. pp. 3–4. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-1-317-42368-3
    , Turkmen, Iraqi citizens of Turkish origin, are the third largest ethnic group in Iraq after Arabs and Kurds, and they are said to number about 3 million of Iraq's 34.7 million citizens according to the Iraqi Ministry of Planning.
  8. ISBN 1-895896-26-6
    , The largest number of Turkmen immigrants followed the army of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent when he conquered all of Iraq in 1535. Throughout their reign, the Ottomans encouraged the settlement of immigrant Turkmen along the loosely formed boundary that divided Arab and Kurdish settlements in northern Iraq.
  9. ISBN 978-1-886604-75-9
    , There's a strong conflict of opinions regarding the origins of Iraqi Turkmen, however, it is certain that they settled down during the Ottoman rule in the northwest of Mosul, whence they spread to eastern Baghdad. Once there, they became high ranked officers, experts, traders, and executives in residential agglomerations lined up along the vast, fertile plains, and mingled with Kurds, Assyrians, Arabs, and other confessions. With the creation of the new Iraqi state in 1921, Iraqi Turkmen managed to maintain their socioeconomic status.
  10. ^ a b International Crisis Group (2008), Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds: Conflict or Cooperation?, International Crisis Group, archived from the original on 12 January 2011, Turkomans are descendents of Ottoman Empire-era soldiers, traders and civil servants... The 1957 census, Iraq's last reliable count before the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958, put the country's population at 6,300,000 and the Turkoman population at 567,000, about 9 per cent...Subsequent censuses, in 1967, 1977, 1987 and 1997, are all considered highly problematic, due to suspicions of regime manipulation.
  11. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7456-3227-8
  12. ^ Taylor 2004, 28.
  13. ISBN 0-944029-93-0
    , The 1957 Iraqi census — the last in which the Turkmens were permitted to register — counted 567,000 Turkmens.
  14. ^ Güçlü, Yücel (2007), Who Owns Kirkuk? The Turkoman Case (PDF), Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2007, p. 79, The last reliable census in Iraqi – and the only one in which participants could declare their mother tongue – was in 1957. It found that Turkomans were the third largest ethnicity in Iraq, after Arabs and Kurds. The Turkomans numbered 567,000 out of a total population of 6,300,000.
  15. doi:10.1163/157338410X12625876281505
  16. ISBN 978-0-8122-0604-3
  17. ^
    ISBN 978-1-317-67487-0
  18. ^ Anderson & Stansfield 2009, 56.
  19. ^ BBC (June 18, 2004). "Who's who in Iraq: Turkmen". Retrieved 2011-11-23. The predominantly Muslim Turkmen are an ethnic group with close cultural and linguistic ties to Anatolia in Turkey.
  20. ^
    S2CID 56385519
  21. ISBN 3-447-04293-1
  22. ^ Boeschoten, Hendrik (1998), "Speakers of Turkic Languages", in Johanson, Lars; Csató, Éva Ágnes (eds.), The Turkic Languages, Routledge, p. 5, There is a Turkish – or rather Azerbaijanian-speaking part of the population of northern Iraq which is sometimes called "Turkmen", similar to the Yuruk tribes in the Balkans and in Anatolia.
  23. ^ a b Johanson, Lars (2001), Discoveries on the Turkic Linguistic Map (PDF), Stockholm: Svenska Forskningsinstitutet i Istanbul, pp. 15–16, The modern Turkish influence was strong until Arabic became the new offıcial language in the 1930s. A certain diglossia Turkish vs. Iraqi Turkic is still observable. Turkish as a prestige language has exerted profound influence on Iraqi Turkic. Thus, the syntax differs sharply from neighboring Irano-Turkic varieties.
  24. ^ Türkmeneli İşbirliği ve Kültür Vakfı. "Declaration of Principles of the (Iraqi?) Turkman Congress". Archived from the original on 2012-03-08. Retrieved 2011-11-25.
  25. ^ Nissman, David (5 March 1999), "The Iraqi Turkomans: Who They Are and What They Want", Iraq Report, 2 (9), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
  26. ISBN 978-1-317-52043-6
  27. ^ Shanks 2016, 58.
  28. ^ Guide: Christians in the Middle East". BBC News. 11 October 2011.
  29. ^ http://www.chaldean.org/news/detail.asp?iData=225&iCat=80&iChannel=2&nChannel=News. Retrieved February 20, 2006. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)[dead link]
  30. ^ [http:// uk.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-gharawi-spe- cial-report-idUSKCN0I30Z820141014 http:// uk.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-gharawi-spe- cial-report-idUSKCN0I30Z820141014]. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help); Missing or empty |title= (help)
  31. ^ About 10,000 Armenians live in Iraq
  32. ISBN 978-90-04-33943-9
    . p. 5.
  33. ISBN 9004109099
    .
  34. ISBN 9780800604882
    .
  35. ^ Who are the Mandaeans Archived March 15, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  36. ^ Saddam praises Sabaeans, pledges to build temple
  37. ^ Minorsky, V. (2012-04-24). "S̲h̲abak". Encyclopaedia of Islam, First Edition (1913-1936).
  38. ^ "Kurdish Gunmen Open Fire on Demonstrators in North Iraq". AINA. 2005-08-16.
  39. ISBN 978-0-7556-0120-2
    .
  40. ^ "Who are the Yezidis? – Dimitri Pir Bari". Free Yezidi Foundation. Retrieved 2021-05-31.
  41. ^ Kaczorowski, Karol. "Yezidism and Proto-Indo-Iranian Religion". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  42. OCLC 879288867
    .
  43. ^ "Black Iraqis in Basra Face Racism". NPR. 2008-12-03.
  44. ^ Bomb attacks in Iraq kill dozens, BBC News website
  45. ^ Iraq bombing kills 70; 182 injured Los Angeles Times website
  46. ^ Kidnapped Iraqi archbishop dead, BBC World Service, March 13, 2008
  47. ^ Death penalty over Iraq killing, BBC World Service, May 18, 2008
  48. ^ a b c Church Bombings in Iraq Since 2004
  49. ^ a b Harrison, Frances (March 13, 2008). "Christians besieged in Iraq". BBC News. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
  50. ^ death of Father Boulos Iskander Archived May 20, 2011, at the Wayback Machine
  51. ^ Basile Georges Casmoussa, Catholic Archbishop, Taken Hostage In Iraq: Diggers Realm

External links

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