Bakr Sidqi

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Bakr Sidqi (Arabic: بكر صدقي‎), an Iraqi nationalist and general of Kurdish descent, was born 1890 in Kirkuk and assassinated on August 12, 1937, at Mosul.

Sidqi was Kurdish by birth, but like many ambitious men who lived in the Ottoman Empire, he joined the Turkish army as a young man; already an Arab nationalist who favored freeing the Arab lands from Turkish domination, he nonetheless spent formative years in what was essentially the colonial army. Having studied at the Military College in Istanbul and graduated as a second lieutenant, he fought in the Balkan Wars and joined the Staff College in Istanbul, graduating in 1915.

Sidqi joined Faisal's army in Syria and served in Aleppo with a number of other Sharifian officers. After the collapse of Faisal's kingdom in Syria, in 1921 Sidqi joined the army of Iraq (which had become an independent country following World War I). He attended the British Staff College and was considered one of Iraq's most competent officers. He lectured in the military school and achieved the rank of colonel in 1928 and brigadier general in 1933. He spent much of his time crushing Assyrian tribal rebellions in the 1930s. In August 1933 Sidqi ordered the Iraqi Army to march to the north to crush militant Assyrian separatists in the town of Sumail, near Mosul, which led to 3,000 Assyrian civilians being killed. ^[1] In 1935, he cracked down on the tribal rebellions at al-Rumaitha and al-Diwaniya with unprecedented harshness.

In October 1936, during the reign of Faisal's ineffectual son King Ghazi I, Sidqi, then acting commander of Iraqi army, staged what was probably the first modern military coup d'état in the Arab world against the government of Yasin al-Hashimi. Iraqi planes distributed leaflets that called for the overthrow of the cabinet and the appointment of ousted anti-reform Prime Minister Hikmat Sulayman. The leaflets warned that the military, under Sidqi's leadership, would march on Baghdad if these steps were not implemented. Jafar al-Askari, minister of defense, attempted to dissuade Sidqi from his plans, but the latter arranged for his murder. Al-Hashimi subsequently resigned and left the country, leaving power to Sidqi, at the head of a conservative group opposed to democratic reforms.

Sulayman became prime minister but after overthrowing the government, it was Sidqi who as commander of the armed forces essentially ruled Iraq. However, the murder of al-Askari created strong feelings against the new government, and Sulayman's cabinet lasted under ten months. Sidqi was assassinated in Mosul on his was to Turkey by a group of dissident nationalist military officers who had withdrawn their support from him. As a result, Sulayman resigned as Prime Minister and was succeeded by Jamil al-Midfai. Sidqi was recognized as one of the most brilliant officers in the Iraqi army, known for his intelligence, ambition, and self-confidence. He also believed the army was needed to bring about reform and achieve order, a stance he shared with Atatürk and Reza Shah Pahlavi.

[edit] See also

Simele massacre

[edit] Notes

^ http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/iq350a.pdf — FIDH report on ethnic cleansing in Iraq, which describes the Sumail massacre in the second paragraph of page 17.