Close to 850,000 Turkmens have been forcefully displaced and uprooted from their hometowns in Iraq and Syria following the U.S. intervention that has been ongoing since 1991 in Iraq with the aim of establishing a puppet state in Iraq and Syria.
Turkmen towns have since come under occupation, such as the ones located in Iraq’s Mosul, Kirkuk and Tal Afar, which suffered demographic shifts, in addition to the Turkmen heartlands in Syria’s Homs, Talbiseh, Aqrab, in addition to central Aleppo and its countryside, Damascus’s Jobar, Raqqa’s Tal Abyad and Latakia’s Turkmen Mountain, all of which have been occupied and bombarded by various terror organizations.
As a result, 460,000 Turkmens were forcefully displaced in Iraq and 390,000 were forced to abandon their towns in Syria.
Representative of the Iraq Turkmen Front Hicran Kazancı noted that the population shift in Iraq began in 2002 when several regions, primarily Kirkuk, underwent a great deal of demographic shifts.
According to Kazancı, Kirkuk’s pre-2002 population of 750,000 was mostly made up of Turkmens, however today, the city’s population surpassed 1.4 million after the Kurds were settled in Kirkuk to become the ethnically dominant group in the city.
Kazancı, who had reported on the events in Kirkuk repeating in Mosul and Tuz Khurma, has noted that recent offensives are still ongoing in Tal Afar:
“Daesh has only sped up plans to forcefully displace Turkmens, the groundwork for which was laid back in 2002,’’ remarked Kazancı, noting that the demographic changes enforced in Mosul and Kirkuk favored the Kurds, however the forced displacement currently underway in Tal Afar by Iranian-backed terrorists will end up shaping the region differently.
“Turkmens suffered the worst losses that being; political, financial, human and land losses, with the American intervention in Iraq, which began in 1991.
“During this phase, 460,000 Turkmens were forecd to flee their homes and at least 20,000 of them were martyred during this war,’’ Kazancı concluded.
Uprooted and abused by the administrations in Iraq and Syria, the international community continues to turn a blind eye to the plight of the Turkmens. Politically, financially and military vulnerable, Turkmens do not factor in any international memorandum regarding their future in Iraq and Syria.
Over 30,000 Turkmens were martyred as they fought back against terrorist groups backed by the PKK/PYD, Daesh, Assad, Russia, the U.S. and Iran, according to the head of the Syria Turkmen Council head Emin Bozoğlan.
According to Bozoğlan, 390,000 Turkmens were forcefully displaced from their hometowns in Syria,
“Hundreds of Turkmen towns in Homs, Aleppo, Damascus, Latakia and Raqqa are under occupation,’’ concluded Bozoğlan.
