Kirkuk saw the highest turnout across Iraq for the provincial elections held on December 18, with 65 percent of eligible voters casting ballots. This was the first time since 2005 that Kirkuk held provincial elections.
“The leadership of our coalition is close to the leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. We were on the same front in the [Iraqi] parliament and the State Administration Coalition also contains the KDP alongside Arab and Turkmen parties, and that closeness in the parliament will reflect on the provincial councils,” Raad Salih al-Jabouri, head of the Arab coalition’s public office, told Rudaw’s Nwenar Fatih.
He labeled the formation of a local government in Kirkuk with the KDP and Turkmen parties as the “closest option.”
“We are very close to the Turkmen Front and we have a previous strategic alliance. Now, we are very close, we are 80 to 90 percent of the way there to reach an agreement and our talks continue,” he said.
Following the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime in 2003, Kirkuk had a Kurdish governor, but when federal government forces returned to the province in October 2017 following Kirkuk’s participation in Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum, Baghdad appointed Rakan al-Jabouri, a Sunni politician and head of the Arab coalition, as acting governor. He has been in the post for six years.
Governor Jabouri’s tenure has been a topic of debate. He is accused by some of attempting to revive the Ba'athist policy of Arabization to weaken the Kurdish population, but others praise him for breathing life back into previously-neglected Arab neighborhoods.
According to the official, the tripartite Arab, KDP, and Turkmen coalition’s most likely option is to seek to form Kirkuk’s local government without the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the party that won the majority of seats in the elections.
“That option, I think, is the closest option to be implemented,” he said.
In Kirkuk’s provincial council elections, the PUK won five seats and KDP won two. A coalition of three Arab parties won six seats and Turkmens secured two seats. The minority Christian quota seat was taken by a candidate close to pro-Iran Shiite militia groups and the PUK.
The KDP and PUK’s feuding over economic and governance issues in the Kurdistan Region has significantly impacted their ability to work together in Kirkuk, and Turkmens are strongly opposed to a Kurdish governor.
In late December, the spokesperson for one of the Arab parties in Kirkuk told Rudaw that Arabs in the province are determined to retain the position of governor, saying the Arabs “directly feel” that the governor’s post must be theirs.
Jabouri echoed his remarks, saying “the two highest posts, the governor and the speaker of the provincial council, will certainly be one for the Arabs and one for the Kurds, but we want the governor to be from the Arab community.”
Two amendments made to the provincial council elections law in May, which apply only to Kirkuk, make it difficult to predict who will fill the province’s governor seat next.
One amendment states that “the results of the elections shall not act as a legal or administrative basis to determine the future of Kirkuk province.”
Kirkuk is a multiethnic city home to Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen, as well as an Assyrian minority. It was under joint administration before 2014, when Kurds took full control after Iraqi forces withdrew in the face of a brazen offensive by the Islamic State (ISIS) group threatening the city. Kurds held Kirkuk until October 16, 2017, when Iraqi forces retook control and expelled the Peshmerga forces after the province took part in Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum.
