The fate of the governorship seat in Kirkuk was decided in Baghdad. Kirkuk provincial council members belonging to the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Babylon Movement, Arab alliance and al-Qaida alliance met in Baghdad’s Rashid Hotel to elect the governor and provincial council chairman. At the end of the meeting, PUK leader Bafel Talabani announced that PUK’s Rebwar Taha was elected as Kirkuk governor.
Provincial elections were held in Kirkuk on 18 December 2023, but there were blockages in the administration system due to the disputes among the groups in the Kirkuk Provincial Council over the establishment of a local administration.
While negotiations were ongoing between Turkmen, Arab and Kurdish representatives in Kirkuk based on “Rotating Governorship”, names from the PUK, Babylon Movement, Arab Alliance and al-Qaida Alliance determined the Governor of Kirkuk at a meeting in a hotel in Baghdad.
According to local sources, the blog consisting of KDP, Arab and Turkmen members was disbanded after the Arab members agreed with the PUK, and the Arab representatives supported the appointment of PUK’s Rebwar Taha as governor in exchange for the deputy governorship and the chairmanship of the Provincial Council. During the session in which Taha was elected as governor, Mohammad Hafez from the Arab alliance was elected as the chairman of the council.
Turkish diplomatic sources, on the other hand, said that it should be examined whether the decisions taken at the meeting in Baghdad have legal equivalence.
Referring to the PUK, Turkish diplomatic sources said, “It is obvious that this group is far from representing the whole of Kirkuk. We will follow the developments closely,” Turkish diplomatic sources said. Turkish sources stressed that terrorist organisations and affiliated structures, especially the PKK, should not be allowed to find political grounds in Kirkuk as a shelter for themselves.
Background and allegations
On 18 December 2023, fifteen years later, elections were held in Kirkuk and according to the results, the PUK entered the parliament with 5 representatives, the Arab representatives through al-Urube, al-Qaida and the Arab Coalition with 6, and the Turkmens and the KDP with 2 representatives each. In addition to the 5 representatives, it won through the elections, the PUK, with its quota of Christian representatives and 6 seats, had clearly expressed its demand to govern alone for 4 years in the face of the rotating governorship proposal of other ethnic groups.
Rakan al-Jabouri, the former governor of Kirkuk and a current member of the provincial council from the Arab bloc, has accused the council of sidelining Arab representatives by not informing them of an overnight session during which a Kurdish member from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) was elected as the new governor.
It is also alleged that a dispute between Mohammed Halbusi and Khamis al-Khanjar, who supported the Arab alliances in the Kirkuk parliament over the disputed governorship election, disintegrated the Arab bloc, and Halbusi, in agreement with Qais Khazali and Bafel Talabani, prepared the ground for the meeting in Baghdad.
