Turcomans demand Talabani not to marginalize them

KIRKUK / IraqiNews.com: The Head of the Turcomans National Party, Jamal Shan, said on Friday that the meeting of a number of Turcomans parties and blocs with President Jalal Talabani focused on discussing the Turcomans’ problems and demands not to marginalize them by the government. “We presented several demands, mainly forming the joint administration in Kirkuk and implementing the constitutional articles related to the Turcomans language and its use in the province,” Shan told IraqiNews.com. “The president vowed to instruct the governor to start implementing all these demands by next week and he also promised to normalize the Turcomans’ relation with the federal government,” he also said. “Talabani listened to our all demands and expressed his personal readiness to intervene as a president in cooperation with other senior officials in the government to solve all problems,” he noted. Kirkuk, 250 km (156 miles) north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, sits on the ruins of a 5,000-year-old settlement. Because of the strategic geographical location of the city, Kirkuk was the battle ground for three empires, Assyria, Babylonia and Media which controlled the city at various times. Kirkuk is the centre of the northern Iraqi petroleum industry. It is a historically and ethnically mixed city populated by Assyrians, Kurds, Arabs and Iraqi Turkmen. The population was estimated at 1,200,000 in 2008. SH (P) 30