Iraqi Turkmen Front
| Iraqi Turkmen Front Irak Türkmen Cephesi الجبهة التركمانية العراقي Al-Jabhat Al-Turkmaniyah Al-Iraqi | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Leader | Sadettin Ergeç |
| Founded | 1995 in Erbil, Iraq |
| Ideology | Turkmen interests |
| Colours | Blue |
| Seats in the Council of Representatives of Iraq: |
5 / 325 |
| Website | |
| http://www.kerkuk.net/ | |
|
Politics of Iraq Political parties Elections | |
The Iraqi Turkmen Front (Turkish: Irak Türkmen Cephesi, Arabic: الجبهة التركمانية العراقي Al-Jabhat Al-Turkmaniyah Al-Iraqi) is a political movement founded in 1995 which seeks to represent the Turkmen people of Iraq. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the ITF has contested control of Kirkuk and other areas of northern Iraq.[1]
The ITF claims a region named Turkmeneli (literally meaning the "land of the Turkmens"[2]) as the homeland by the Iraqi Turkmens. Turkmeneli includes within its boundaries Kirkuk, Tel Afar, Erbil, Mandali, Mosul, and Tuz Khormato.[3][2]
ITF Composition
The ITF is a coalition of the following political parties:
- Iraqi National Turkmen Party (INTP), founded in 1988 and operated in the northern Iraqi no-fly zones
- Turkmeneli Party, founded in 1992 in Northern Cyprus as the Turkmen Union Party
- Provincial Turkmen Party
- Movement of the Independent Turkmen
- Iraqi Turkmen Rights Party
- Turkmen Islamic Movement of Iraq
Election results
In the Iraqi legislative election, December 2005, the ITF list (#630) polled 76,434 votes, or 0.7% nationwide, according to the uncertified published results. The overwhelming majority of those votes were cast in Kirkuk Province, where the ITF won more than 10% of the total. Most of the rest of the ITF's votes were in Salah ad Din province. According to the full official results of that election, the ITF is entitled to only one seat in the permanent National Assembly. The party has been funded deeply by the Turkish administration and military.[4]
In the aftermath of the first Iraqi parliamentary election in 2005, the ITF lodged a number of formal complaints to the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq alleging vote fraud on the part of the Kurdish parties and protesting the Commission's decision to allow Kurdish internally displaced persons and refugees to vote in the places from which they had been expelled under Saddam Hussein. In the election, they received just over 90,000 votes, or 1.1% of votes cast, earning them three seats in the trasitional National Assembly of Iraq.
In the 2009 Iraqi Kurdistan legislative election, the ITF polled just 7,077 votes, or 0.38% of the popular vote, winning 1 seat.
In the 2010 Iraqi national elections, the ITF candidate in the Turkmen stronghold of Kirkuk, Arshad al-Salihi, won 59,732 votes as a part of Iyad Allawi's Iraqiya List. This was second only to Khalid Shwani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who won 68,522 votes.
