Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...05Jan29_2.html
...Kirkuk's last census was conducted nearly 50 years ago -- in 1957 -- when Iraq was still a monarchy. It determined that Kirkuk was 40 percent Turkmen and 35 percent Kurdish, with the remainder divided among Arabs, Jews, Assyrians and Armenians. But the displacement of Kurds, the influx of Arabs under Hussein and the absence of accurate population data leave Kirkuk's present makeup in dispute....
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Good, detailed background, here, Elphalba....my friend has impressed upon me that Turkey regards Kirkuk as a part of Turkey because of claims from the days when it was part of the Ottoman Empire that dissolved with the Turkish defeat in WWI, the large Kirkuk ethnic Turk population, and the large oil deposits are an added incentive...Kirkuk is south of the Kurd controlled area of Northern iraq....it's location probably makes it impossible that it will ever be reunited with Turkey....
I can't stress enough how taking down Saddam and killing his heirs, too...sets that region on a course of slow motion destruction, along with it's vast oil reserves. That region had gone from hundreds of years peaceful of Ottoman control...to British authority in 1919. In 1920, Gertrude Bell drew a new map that defined the new Iraq's borders. The British correctly assessed the limitations....the Kurds needed to be seperate from the new Turkey....Turkey would not tolerate a seperate Kurdish state....the Shi'a majority was incapable of ruling....the best way to protect the Kurdish and Sunni minorities from the Shi'a was to put one of the cunning and resourceful Sunni minority in charge. That power equation lasted until Bush toppled Saddam, 81 years later. Only a new Sunni led government will keep Tureky and Iran out of Iraq. That can only be achieved by Sunni violence, and Sunnis are trying.
....but the Turks and Kurds have been an ongoing problem....
Quote:
http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/it...urst_bell.html
....Coda
Political strife in Iraq did not settle down after the coronation. In 1923 Shia divines in the south began to stir up trouble and were shipped off to Persia. The areas east of Erbil, Kifri and Kirkuk were causing headaches for the adminis-trators in Baghdad. The Kurds in the north were kicking up trouble. And, finally, the Turks were ejected along the northern border later that year. But the reign of the Hashemites lasted until 1958, when Faisal's grandson and family were assassinated.....
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Turkish Government defense against genocide charge:
http://goturkey.turizm.gov.tr/BelgeG...C077A9979C33C4
Report from German magazine on the background of the US legislative committee vote:
Quote:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...511210,00.html
October 12, 2007
ARMENIAN LOBBY'S TRIUMPH
Genocide Resolution Risks Shattering Relations with Turkey
By Gregor Peter Schmitz in Washington
......The fact that it has now been approved is a triumph for the "Armenian Lobby," if you want to call them that. Around 1.2 million Americans have Armenian forefathers and many of them grew up listening to the tales of the suffering of their people.
Armenian-Americans are particularly active in California, New Jersey and Michigan -- which happens to be the constituency of Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House. Her Californian colleague Adam Schiff, who promoted the resolution, has the issue to thank for his own political career. His predecessor in the constituency lost his seat when he failed to push through the resolution in 2000.
Armenian groups have been bombarding their representatives over the past few years with an unusually massive PR drive. Their most important umbrella group "Armenian Assembly of America" has 10,000 members and an annual budget of over $3.5 million. It employs four different influential PR firms in Washington to keep the suffering of the Armenians on the agenda in the US capital.
The Turkish government couldn't do enough to counter them, even though for years it has invested millions of dollars in presenting its arguments. Ankara engaged prominent former representatives like Republican Bob Livingston, who even produced his own video in which he argued against unnecessarily damaging relations with Turkey. And he said that Turkey was still an important symbol of how a Muslim society can build democratic structures.
In the complicated intertwining of minority representation in the US, many Americans with Armenian roots also say the approval of the resolution as a sign that they have arrived in the center of American society. They compare their lobby work with the success of the Jewish lobby in the US, which has anchored the commemoration of the Holocaust in Americans' collective memor........
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Former California governor, a republican is the son of Armenian parents from Iran:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Deukmejian