Baghdad: (Web Desk) The Iraqi government has withdrawn the decision to ban the use of the “Turkmani” language in the northern province of Kirkuk.
According to a foreign news agency, Iraqi Prime Minister Shia al-Sudani has instructed officials to ensure that the Turkmen language remains part of the official correspondence languages in Kirkuk, along with Arabic and Kurdish. .
It should be noted that the Iraqi northern province of Kirkuk is a region with a large population of Turkomans from the Ottoman period and the inhabitants speak the Turkoman language.People’s language is also Turkmen.
Remember that Turkmen is a Turkic language spoken by about three and a half million people in Turkmenistan, in addition to two million people in northeastern Iran and one and a half million in northwestern Afghanistan.
A Turkish Foreign Ministry statement said the ban also clearly contradicts the provisions of the Iraqi constitution, as Article 4 of the constitution states that Turkmen shall be the official language in administrative units in which the Turkmen population is concentrated.
Such actions ignore the rights and sensitivities of the Turkmen community and will undermine efforts to establish a culture of peaceful coexistence in Kirkuk, the ministry said.
It should be noted that there are no official figures on the total Turkmen population of Iraq, but Turkmen officials say they make up about seven percent of the country’s more than 40 million people.