turkey and kirkurk:
Saddam for years attempted to "Arabize" Kirkuk by driving out native Kurds and Turkmen replacing them with Arabs, many of them Shiites relocated from the south. Today, Iraqi Kurdish leaders are demanding the implementation of Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution, a crucial article related to the normalization of the demographics of Kirkuk and which orders an official referendum regarding the status of the city in a future federal Iraq.
(...) Iraqi Kurds for several years have demanded the reversal of Saddam’s injustices and have claimed that Kirkuk is the heart of Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurdish leaders have ambitions to annex the oil-rich city of Kirkuk to their federal region and proclaim it as their capital. However, the problem lies in the fact that the city sits on nearly 40 percent of Iraq’s oil. Turkey fears that such moves would allow Kurds to gain the economic power they need to move towards full independence. Turkish officials fear that such a circumstance would incite separatism among Turkey’s own Kurdish population, and have called for a delay in the referendum.
(...) Groups such as the Turkmen Democratic Movement highly oppose Turkey intervening in Iraq’s political processes, further undermining Turkey’s claims in protecting Iraqi Turkmen interests. The leader, Kalkhi Noureddin, says the group was formed after realizing “foreign interference does not serve the interests of Turkmens in [Iraqi] Kurdistan”. Noureddin currently works with the Kurdish administration and believes that dialogue between Iraqi Kurds and Turkey is necessary in order to avoid armed conflict.
(...) U.S. officials declared such Shiite armed groups, reportedly backed by Iran, as the deadliest threats to the security in the region. Local residents say their presence is marked by bomb explosions and murders.
(...) Recently, an Iraqi Kurdish official in Kirkuk, Nejat Hassan, asserted that Iraqi Security Forces obtained enough evidence to prove that Turkey’s Intelligence Agency has been carefully conducting much of the terrorist activity in Kirkuk, targeting both Iraqi government officials as well as civilians.
(...) Many Turkish politicians have openly stated that the oil-rich districts of Kirkuk and Mosul are historically Ottoman. For this reason, some Kurdish officials say, Turkey wishes to re-annex the area and its lucrative oil to its territory.
(...) However the politics may turn out remains unclear. Nevertheless, while U.S. officials condemn foreign interference resulting in many of the problems throughout Iraq, Kurdish officials believe the same applies to Kirkuk as an internal Iraqi affair in which Turkey should not interfere.