Minorities in Iraq
Minorities in Iraq have been incredibly influential to the history of the country, and consist of various ethnic and religious groups. The largest minority group in Iraq is the Kurds, with Turkmen following shortly after. Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Assyrians constituted a sizeable population of 1.5 million, and belonged to various different churches such as the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, and the Syriac Orthodox/Catholic Churches. Other minority groups in Iraq include Armenians, Mandaeans, Baha'i, and Marsh Arabs, among others.
Kurds
The vast majority of Iraqi Kurds are Sunni Muslims, with Shia and Christian minorities.Under the Kingdom of Iraq, Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani led a rebellion against the central government in Baghdad in 1945. After the failure of the uprising Barzānī and his followers fled to the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, when Iraqi Brigadier Abdul-Karim Qassem distanced himself from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser, he faced growing opposition from pro-Egypt officers in the Iraqi army. When the garrison in Mosul rebelled against Qassem's policies, he allowed Barzānī to return from exile to help suppress the pro-Nasser rebels. By 1961, Barzānī and the Kurds began a full-scale rebellion.
When the Ba'ath Party took power in Iraq, the new government, in order to end the Kurdish revolt, granted the Kurds their own limited autonomy. However, for various reasons, including the pro-Iranian sympathies of some Kurds during the Iran–Iraq War in the 1980s, the regime implemented anti-Kurdish policies and a de facto civil war broke out. From March 29, 1987, until April 23, 1989, the infamous Al-Anfal campaign, a systematic genocide of the Kurdish people in Iraq, was launched. For this, Iraq was widely condemned by the international community, but was never seriously punished for oppressive measures, including the use of chemical weapons against the Kurds, which resulted in thousands of deaths.
After the Gulf War, the Kurds began another uprising against the Ba'athists and established the autonomous Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq, which was never recognized by the Iraqi government until 2005. During the same year, Turkey, fighting Kurds on its on territory, bombed Kurdish areas in Northern Iraq, claiming that bases for the terrorist Kurdistan Workers Party were located in the region. However, the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam, brought renewed hope to the Kurds. The Kurds have since been working towards developing the area and pushing for democracy in the country. However, most Kurds overwhelmingly favor becoming an independent nation. "In the January 2005 Iraqi elections, 98.7 percent of Kurds voted for full independence rather than reconciliation with Iraq." Almost no other political or social group in the region is agreeable to the idea of Kurdish independence. Iraq's neighboring countries such as Turkey are particularly opposed to the movement because they fear that an independent Iraqi Kurdistan would strengthen Kurdish independence movements in their own territories.
Nouri al-Maliki was at loggerheads with the leader of ethnic Kurds, who brandished the threat of secession in a growing row over the symbolic issue of flying the Iraqi national flag at government buildings in the autonomous Kurdish north. Maliki's Arab Shi'ite-led government was locked in a dispute with the autonomous Kurdish regional government, which has banned the use of the Iraqi state flag on public buildings. The prime minister issued a blunt statement on Sunday saying: "The Iraqi flag is the only flag that should be raised over any square inch of Iraq." But Mesud Barzani, president of the Iraqi Kurdistan region, told the Kurdish parliament the national leadership were "failures" and that the Iraqi flag was a symbol of his people's past oppression by Baghdad: "If at any moment we, the Kurdish people and parliament, consider that it is in our interests to declare independence, we will do so and we will fear no one." The dispute exposes a widening rift between Arabs and Kurds, the second great threat to Iraq's survival as a state after the growing sectarian conflict between Arab Sunnis and Shi'ites.
Shabaks
Although their origins are uncertain, Shabaks are considered to be of Kurdish ethnicity by some scholars, and form an estimated population of 200–500,000 as of 2017. Many Shabaks in Iraq are concentrated in the Nineveh Plains and areas such as Mosul and the Assyrian village of Bartella. They are an ethnic and religious minority, retaining their own distinct pre-Islamic religion, though many consider themselves to be Shia Muslims.Shabaks have their own distinct language, Shabaki, that combines elements of Turkish and Arabic. However, many Shabaks fear that the language will be lost due to human-rights violations against them by ISIS. The Shabak are represented in the Iraqi parliament and have a militia registered under the Popular Mobilization Forces known as the Shabak Brigade.
Yezidis
Today, there are around 650,000 Yezidis in Iraq, who primarily live in the northern areas of the country. They primarily speak Kurdish with the exception of the two villages Bashiqa and Bahzani, located near Mosul. Amongst scholars and Yezidi social circles, there is continuous debate over the identity of Yezidis and whether or not they are ethnically Kurdish or a separate group of people. Yazidism has roots in a western Pre-Zoroastrian religion, and is based in the belief that the world was created by God to be entrusted in the care of seven angels.Feylis
The Feylis are an ethnographic group of Shia Muslim Kurds who follows the Ja'fari school. The Feylis are indigenous to Elam, Lorestan, and Kirmanshah, the region between Iraq and Iran, they live in the central and northeastern parts of Iraq. There are also a big Feyli community in Baghdad, many of whom come from well known aristocratic families, who originally migrated from Persia during the 1600 and 1700s. Their population is estimated to be around 1,500,000 to 2,500,000 in Iraq which is about 30% of the Iraqi Kurdish population. They are known for being very wealthy businessmen, bankers, merchants, politicians, senators, highly educated and dominated the politics and economy of Iraq especially during the 30s until the 70s. Unlike the other sunni Kurds the Feylis speak the southern Kurdish dialect. In the mid-1970s, the Iraqi government launched a campaign of forced deportation and exile targeting the Feyli Kurds. In 1970, more than 70,000 Feylis were deported to Iran and their citizenship was revoked, alleging that they were Iranian nationals. On 7 May 1980, Saddam Hussein signed decree number 666 which legalized and ordered the confiscation, forced deportation, exile and detention of Feyli Kurds. Saddam justified the decree by accusing Feyli Kurds of having "foreign origin" and "disloyalty to the people and father land and to the political and social principles of the Revolution", deporting over 700 000 Feylis to Iran. However, since 2003 many Feyli Kurds have returned to Iraq and been granted Iraqi citizenship.Turkmen
The Iraqi Turkmen are the third largest ethnic group in the country, after the Arabs and Kurds. They are a branch of the Turkic peoples and adhere to that heritage and identity, this is because most Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman are the descendants of the Ottoman soldiers, traders and civil servants who were brought into Iraq from Anatolia during the rule of the Ottoman Empire. Since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman have found themselves increasingly discriminated against from the policies of successive regimes, such as the Kirkuk Massacre of 1923, 1947, 1959, and in 1979 when the Ba'ath Party discriminated against the community. Although the Turks were recognized as a constitutive entity of Iraq in the constitution of 1925, the Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman were later denied this status.According to the 1957 Iraqi census the Turkmen/Turkoman had a population of 567,000, accounting for 9% of the total Iraqi population. By 2013, the Iraqi Ministry of Planning said that there were 3 million Turkmen/Turkoman, out of a population of 34.7 million, forming 8.65% of the population. The Turkmen/Turkoman minority mainly reside in northern and central Iraq, in the so-called Turkmeneli region – which is a political term used by the Turkmen/Turkoman to define the vast swath of territory in which they have historically had a dominant population. In particular, the Turkmen/Turkoman consider the capital of Turkmeneli to be Kirkuk and its boundaries also include Tal Afar, Mosul, Erbil, Mandali, and Tuz Khurmatu. According to Liam Anderson and Gareth Stansfield, the Turkmen/Turkoman note that the term "Turcomania" – an Anglicized version of "Turkmeneli" – appears on a map of the region published by William Guthrie in 1785, however, there is no clear reference to Turkmeneli until the end of the twentieth century. According to Khalil Osman there has been "a raft of federalist schemes" proposed by various Turkmen/Turkoman political parties.
The Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman share close cultural and linguistic ties with Turkey, particularly the Anatolian region. They are predominately Muslims, formed of a majority Sunni population but there is also a significant number of Turkmen/Turkoman practicing the Shia branch of Islam. Nonetheless, the Turkmen are mainly secular, having internalized the secularist interpretation practiced in the Republic of Turkey. The minority speak their own dialect of Turkish, which is often called "Turkmen". This dialect was influenced by Ottoman Turkish from 1534 onwards, but also by Persian during the brief capture of Baghdad in 1624; thereafter, in 1640, the Turkish varieties continued to be influenced by Ottoman Turkish, as well as other languages in the region, such as Arabic and Kurdish. Some linguists have suggested that the dialect spoken by Turkmen/Turkoman is similar to the South Azeri dialect used by the Turkish Yörük tribes in the Balkans and Anatolia. However, the Turkmen/Turkoman dialect is particularly close to the Turkish dialects of Diyarbakır and Urfa in south-eastern Turkey and Istanbul Turkish has long been the prestige dialect which has exerted a profound historical influence on their dialect. In addition, the Iraqi Turkmen/Turkoman grammar differs sharply from Irano-Turkic varieties, such as South Azeri and Afshar types. In 1997 the Turkmen/Turkoman adopted the Turkish alphabet as the formal written language and by 2005 the community leaders decided that the Turkish language would replace the Arabic script in Iraqi schools. The current prevalence of satellite television and media exposure from Turkey may have also led to the standardisation of Turkmeni towards Turkish, and the preferable language for adolescents associating with the Turkish culture.