The media in general is running after the news of the clashes in Iraq, with each outlet covering the recent confrontations in the way that declares its agenda and its funder's interests. There are not enough reports regarding the humanitarian situation, especially the situation of those who the ongoing war has forced to leave their homes. Many painful stories are going around among people who are trying to help the displaced. The stories of the Turkomans' displacements have been particularly painful because they feel alone in the midst of their tragedy, being caught between a rock and a hard place. In Kirkuk, the oil-rich northern city that has become the most valuable piece of the Iraqi cake for many internal and external powers, there are displaced Turkoman families from Tel Afer (Mosul), Bashir, a village south of Kirkuk, and the villages of Birawchili, Chardagli and Karanaz (Salaheddin). There are also many Arab families from Mosul, Ramadi and Fallujah. There are no sectarian disputes, since the families, Sunni and Shia, have all been forced by the war and violence to leave their homes. The displaced have asked that the place they have gathered in not be mentioned, and they are afraid of what could happen were they to be discovered. The names of those talked to by Al-Ahram Weekly are not their real names, as false names are being used for protection. Jalila, 36, from the village of Bashir about 20 km south of Kirkuk has not been able to forget the night 10 days ago when her village was attacked. Her husband went out where the other men of the village were gathered. All the inhabitants of the village are Turkomans, and the village was also totally destroyed in the 1980s. Jalila hardly recalls those years, but she remembers every single moment of the night they were attacked and she lost her husband. “He asked me to take the kids, our two daughters and one son, the eldest is 12 years old. I walked with the other women for more than three hours to reach the town of Taza about 15 km south of Kirkuk and by the morning we had reached the city itself.” “By the afternoon I had heard that my husband and another 25 men had been killed.” The bodies were only sent to their families after four days. Jalila's youngest daughter, Shangul, four, started crying when a car stopped and three men walked towards them. Jalila hugged her daughter, tears in her eyes, not knowing what to say. One of the men said that they were from the same neighbourhood where the displaced were from and that they had brought food and water for them. “My kids and other children feel afraid of every stranger,” Jalila said. The families refuse to be visited or helped, as they are afraid that somebody might find them and attack them again. In the same place there was a family from Fallujah. Ahmed, the father, a young Turkoman, spoke to the Weekly. During prayers, he revealed that he was a Shia. Knowing that we were Sunni, he said that “in the real Iraq there are no differences among us. Only the politicians are trying to deepen sectarian disputes because they could not continue their political lives if they quit playing on sectarian problems.” Abu Hayder, a Turkoman from the village of Birawchili, seemed as if he had not slept for days. Tears in his eyes, he said that he missed his home, adding that “my brother-in-law is a Sunni Turkoman. Before 2003, we never thought to ask anyone about his sect.” The men who had attacked his village, he said, had not allowed them to take anything with them. “Iraq is large and kind to bear with us,” he said. “But we will never find words to express what we have been through.” About 250 Turkoman families from Tel Afer reached Tuz Khormatu 75 km south of Kirkuk. There are more than 300 km between Tel Aher and Tuz Khormatu. They first left for Sinjar, and then, following hard roads, they reached Kirkuk, with many proceeding to Tuz Khormatu. Yildrim, a father of nine children, said that “we stayed in Sinjar for many days without having even a tent. Our kids began sleeping under the cars to find shelter. We did not receive any help or aid. No one visited us, and we had to leave everything behind.” More than 700 Turkoman families reached Kirkuk. Six hundred Turkoman families from the towns of Delli Abbas and Al-Jabal east of Diyala reached the town of Qara Tepe. In a phone call with the Weekly, a local man, Metin Bayatli, said that “we opened our houses to them. There are two families in my house alone.” The Turkomans of Qara Tepe are mostly Shia, and the displaced Turkomans coming there are mostly Sunni. The Turkomans, the third-largest ethnic group in Iraq, have been undergoing change for decades, Arabisation before 2003 and Kurdification afterwards. All their towns were put under Article 140, which expired in 2007, of the Iraqi constitution that links them to the disputed areas related to the Kurdish Regional Government, Kirkuk among them. The Turkomans say that Kirkuk is their capital. On 10 June, Kurdish Peshmergas entered Kirkuk, and Kurdish President Masoud Barzani declared that Article 140 of the Constitution would apply and the Kurds would not now leave Kirkuk. According to the London Financial Times, “Turkey's ruling party has signalled it is ready to accept an independent Kurdish state in what is now northern Iraq, marking a historic shift by one of the heavyweight powers of the Middle East.” “In the past an independent Kurdish state was a reason for war [for Turkey] but no one has the right to say this now,” Hussein Celik, spokesman for the ruling Turkish AK Party, told the paper. This statement came after Barzani's declaration, making the Turkomans feel even more alone. According to Turhan Ketene, an independent Turkoman politician, “in the last few years the AKP government has interfered in many Arab countries' internal affairs. The results have shown that it has been wrong to do so. Kirkuk and northern Iraq is part of Iraq and the Iraqis will fight for unity.” For Ketene, Iran has also been following the situation closely, though Iran does not support a Kurdish state because it knows that the Kurds, Azeris and Arabs who are part of Iran could start working for their own independence. Turkey, on the other hand, may think that its own Kurds could settle in an independent Kurdish state, ridding it of the problem. Until the present crisis is resolved in Iraq, the Turkomans will remain between a rock and a hard place. For the time being, the Turkomans and other displaced people will continue to look forward to going back to their towns and villages and waiting for local and international NGOs to help them.
