[18]Professor Orit Bashkin has observed that within Iraqi Turkmen literature, poets have managed to "remain loyal to Iraq as a state" whilst they have also "concurrently upheld their Turkish distinctiveness": For Mustafa Gökkaya (b.

[7][22][23][24] The Iraqi Turkmen are believed to be the descendants of various waves of Turkic settlement in Mesopotamia beginning from the 7th century until the end of Ottoman rule (1919).

[22][23][24][25] The presence of Turkic peoples in what is today Iraq first began in the 7th century when approximately 2,000[26]–5,000[27][28] Oghuz Turks were recruited in the Muslim armies of Ubayd-Allah ibn Ziyad.

[22] Large scale migration of the Turkmen in Iraq occurred in 1055 with the invasion of Sultan Tuğrul Bey, the second ruler of the Seljuk dynasty, who intended to repair the holy road to Mecca.

[22][28] By the first half of the sixteenth century the Ottomans had begun their expansion into Iraq, waging wars against their arch rival, the Persian Safavids.

[31] In 1534, under the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, Mosul was sufficiently secure within the Ottoman Empire and became the chief province (eyalet) responsible for all other administrative districts in the region.

[32] The Ottomans encouraged migration from Anatolia and the settlement of immigrant Turkmen along northern Iraq, religious scholars were also brought in to preach Hanafi (Sunni) Islam.

[33] With the conquest of Iraq by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1534, followed by Sultan Murad IV's capture of Baghdad in 1638, a large influx of Turks settled down in the region.

[28][23] After defeating the Safavids on December 31, 1534, Suleiman entered Baghdad and set about reconstructing the physical infrastructure in the province and ordered the construction of a dam in Karbala and major water projects in and around the city's countryside.

[38] Since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the Iraqi Turkmen have found themselves increasingly mistreated under successive regimes, such as in the massacres of 1923, 1946, and 1959, and from 1980, when the Ba'th Party targeted the community.

[49][50] The dialects possess their own unique characteristics, but have also been influenced by the historical standards of Ottoman Turkish (which was the official language of administration and lingua franca in Iraq between 1534 and 1920[51]) and neighboring Azerbaijani Turkic.

[52] In particular, standard (i.e. Istanbul) Turkish as a prestige language has exerted a profound influence on their dialects;[53] thus, the syntax in Iraqi Turkmen differs sharply from neighboring Irano-Turkic varieties.

[45] According to Christiane Bulut, Iraqi Turkman is neither Azeri nor Anatolian Turkish but "a transitional dialect group, displaying linguistic features similar to both".

[84][51] Due to the existence of different Turkish migration waves to Iraq for over 1,200 years, the Iraqi Turkmen varieties are by no means homogeneous;[84][52] dialects can vary according to regional features.

[55][83] In 2020, a request to grant ISO 639 code for Iraqi Turkmen was submitted to SIL,[88] but later rejected in 2024 as it doesn't meet the criteria for being a distinct language.

[58] Kelsey Shanks has argued that "the move to Turkish can be seen as a means to strengthen the collective "we" identity by continuing to distinguish it from the other ethnic groups.

Furthermore, the Turkmen officer for the Ministry of Education in Nineveh has requested from the "United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq" the instigation of Turkish language classes for parents.

[117] Scott Taylor has described the political nature of the results thusly: According to the 1957 census conducted by King Faisal II – a monarch supported by the British – there were only 136,800 Turkmen in all of Iraq.

Bearing in mind that since the British had wrested control of Mesopotamia from the Turks after the First World War, a deliberate campaign had been undertaken to eradicate or diminish all remnants of Ottoman influence.

Therefore it should not be surprising that after Abdul Karim Kassem launched his successful revolution in 1958 – killing 23-year-old King Faisal II, expelling the British and declaring Iraq a republic – that a different set of numbers was published.

[10] The major cities claimed to be a part of their homeland include: Altun Kupri, Badra, Bakuba, Diala, Erbil, Khanaqin, Kifri, Kirkuk, Kizilribat, Mendeli, Mosul, Salahaldeen, Sancar, Tal Afar, and Tuz Khurmatu.

[10] According to the 1957 census the Iraqi Turkmen formed the majority of inhabitants in the city of Kirkuk, with 40% declaring their mother tongue as "Turkish".

[38] In 1924, the Iraqi Turkmens were seen as a disloyal remnant of the Ottoman Empire, with a natural tie to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's new Turkish nationalist ideology emerging in the Republic of Turkey.

[144]Several presidential decrees and directives from state security and intelligence organizations indicate that the Iraqi Turkmen were a particular focus of attention during the assimilation process during the Ba'th regime.

[152] Thus, ethnic cleansing was an element of the Ba'thist policy aimed at reducing the influence of the Iraqi Turkmen in northern Iraq's Kirkuk.

The largest concentration of Iraqi Turkmen tended to be in the de facto capital of Erbil, a city which they had assumed prominent administrative and economic positions.

[155] In March 2000, the Human Rights Watch reported that the KDP's security attacked the offices of the ITF in Erbil, killing two guards, following a lengthy period of disputes between the two parties.

[157] According to United Nations reports, the KRG and Peshmerga were "illegaily policing Kirkurk, abducting Turkmen and Arabs and subjecting them to torture".

Between 2003 and 2006, 1,350 Turkmens in Tal A'far died mainly from sectarian violence and war and thousands of houses were damaged or demolished, resulting in 4,685 displaced families.

[159][160] Iraqi Turkmen have also emerged as a key political force in the controversy over the future status of northern Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.