The Iraqi Turkmen Front (Turkmen: Irak Türkmen Cephesi) is a political movement founded in 1995 which seeks to represent the Turkmen people of Iraq. Since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the ITF has contested control of Kirkuk and other areas of northern Iraq claimed by the Kurdistan Regional Government. Although the ITF opposes Iraqi federalism on the grounds that it would give too much power to Iraqi Kurds, the ITF president Faruk Abdullah Abdurrahman has expressed a desire for an eventual Iraqi Turkmen state. In the meantime, the ITF seeks recognition for Turkmen as a national minority.
In the aftermath of the Iraqi parliamentary election, 2005, the ITF lodged a number of formal complaints to the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq alleging vote fraud on the part of the Kurdish parties and protesting the Commission's decision to allow Kurdish internally displaced persons and refugees to vote in the places from which they had been expelled under Saddam Hussein.[1] In the election, they recived just over 90,000 votes, or 1.1% of votes cast, earning them three seats in the trasitional National Assembly of Iraq.
In early March 2005, the ITF agreed to join the Shia-led UIA's caucus in the National Assembly according to Zaman Online, after a disappointing result in which more Turkmens seem to have voted for the UIA or the Kurdish alliance than for the ITF.[2]
The ITF receives part of its funding from the government of Turkey. The Turkish government still has unrelinquished claims on the territory of the Vilayet of Mosul , which includes most of present-day northern Iraq.
ITF consists of the following entities:
- Provincial Turkmen Party
- Iraqi Turkmen National Party
- Movement of Independent Turkmen
- Iraqi Turkmen Rights Party
- Turkmen Islamic Movement of Iraq
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