| Iraqi Turkmen genocide | |
|---|---|
| Part of the2014 Northern Iraq offensive, theWar in Iraq (2013–2017), and the aftermath of thePersecution of Iraqi Turkmen in Ba'athist Iraq | |
 A local anti-IS militia in the Shia Turkmen town ofQara Tapa in 2018 | |
| Location | Iraq |
| Date | 1 August 2014 – 31 August 2017[1] |
| Target | Iraqi Turkmen,Shia Muslims |
Attack type | Genocidal massacre,ethnic cleansing,forced conversion,genocidal rape,sexual slavery |
| Deaths | At least 3,500[2] |
| Victims | ~5,000 disappeared,[2] 600,000+ displaced[3][2] |
| Perpetrators |  Islamic State |
| Motive | Anti-Shi'ism,[4][5]Arabization,[6]Islamic Statism |
TheIraqi Turkmen genocide refers to the series of killings, rapes, executions, expulsions, and sexual slavery ofIraqi Turkmen inIslamic State-controlled territory.[2] It began when IS captured Iraqi Turkmen lands in 2014 and it continued until IS lost all of their land inIraq. In 2017, it was officially recognized as a genocide by the Parliament of Iraq,[7][8] and in 2018, the sexual slavery was also recognized by theUnited Nations.[9][10]
Iraqi Turkmen are the third largest ethnic group in Iraq. They are ofTurkic descent and live in theTurkmeneli historical region, surrounded byArabs to the south andKurds to the north.[11]: 313 They are divided almost evenly betweenSunni andShia, with a smallCatholic minority.[12] There was alsosectarianism between Sunni and Shia Turkmen, which often escalated toarmed clashes.[13] During the genocide by the Islamic State, Iraqi Turkmen were targeted regardless of religion or sect.[14][15] They had also been targeted during the1991 Altun Kupri massacre,1946 Gavurbağı massacre,1959 Kirkuk massacre,1924 Kirkuk massacre, and theAnfal campaign.[16]
During theJune 2014 Northern Iraq offensive, IS captured many lands that are Turkmen-majority or have significant Turkmen populations, such asMosul,Talafar,Tikrit and parts ofKirkuk andDiyala provinces.[17]
In June 2014, when IS's army first captured Talafar, it abducted 1,300 Iraqi Turkmen, around 700 men, 470 women and 130 children. TheITF stated that only 42 of the 1,300 abductees have returned, and the rest of them have not been seen again.[18] 300 Turkmen were massacred then.[19] Turkmen houses were burnt down, their livestock were stolen and many of them were forced to flee.[20] In September 2014, at least 350,000 Turkmen, the majority of them were from Tal Afar, became displaced. They were in danger of dying of starvation.[21] Since the attacks, around 90 percent of Talafar's Turkmens have fled, according to residents and local activists.[22]Mahdi al-Bayati, the former Iraqi Minister of Human Rights and a spokesperson for the Turkmen Rescue Foundation, claimed that the number of Turkmen refugees rose to 600,000 in February 2017.[3] Mehdi al-Beyati also claimed that every Turkmen region's infrastructure was badly damaged by IS.[23] In September 2014, the UN sent a team into Iraq to investigate the crimes, andAmnesty International presented evidence of the Islamic State committing acts of ethnic cleansing against Turkmens.[6]
Many Islamic State militants were former soldiers in the Iraqi Army underSaddam Hussein, who hada history of massacring and persecuting Iraqi Turkmen.[24][25][26][27]
On 9 June, 15 Turkmen prisoners from Talafar were killed by IS in Mosul. After the bombing of a Shia mosque in the same town, many people fled the city and nine refugees were killed.[28] 65 children from the Yezidi and Turkmen communities were left in an orphanage in Mosul, who were traumatized from witnessing their parents murder. Some of these children were sexually abused.[29] Although the Islamic State committed genocide on Iraqi Turkmen and Yazidis at the same time with the same brutality, global attention had initially been on theYazidi genocide.[30]
During theFall of Mosul in June 2014, the Islamic State attacked the Turkish consulate of Mosul and kidnapped 49 diplomats.Ahmet Davutoğlu stated that "no one should try to test the limits of Turkey's strength", although the Islamic State ignored the warning and attacked Turkmen in Tal Afar on June 10, after capturing Mosul. Turkey did not respond to the attacks, which caused Turkish politicians fromsecular andnationalist groups to heavily criticizeRecep Tayyip Erdoğan and Ahmet Davutoğlu, accusing them of having allowed the Iraqi Turkmen genocide.[31][15][32]
On June 16, 2014, IS massacred at least 40 Turkmen from 4 different locations (Chardaghli, Qaranaz, Bashir, Birawchi), all near the city of Kirkuk.[33][28] IS was also again accused of targeting Turkmens for their ethnicity.[5][6] A day after, another 52 Turkmen were killed in Bashir, and according to locals, the massacre was again ethnically motivated.[34] The same location suffered again once in 18 June and between 20 and 21 June, killing five and then 17 civilians.[35] According to a witness from Bashir, 700 Turkmens were massacred in the town.[36] In 2014 June, IS abducted 26 Shia Turkmen from Al-Shamsiyat village.[28] During the same month, Shia Turkmens fled from Al-Kibba and Shrikhan after threats from IS.[37] Many Turkmen residents of the villages Talafar, Bashir, Birawchi and Qaranaz also fled after receiving more letters from thejihadists.[38]
On 18 June during the clashes between IS andIraqi Ground Forces between the towns of Amirli and Tuz Khurmatu, at least 20 Turkmen civilians were killed.[35] During thesiege of Amirli, 150 people lost their lives due to the harsh conditions, including 50 children and 10 new borns.[39] After Amirli's fall in 2014, the town's electricity, food and water supplies were cut. Dozens lost their lives, including pregnant women, before a humanitarian aid was delivered. Homes and schools, as well as mosques in Qaranaz, Chardaghli and Birawchi were burnt down.[40]
On June 23, IS abducted at least 75 Turkmen from the areas of Guba, Shrikhan, and Talafar. Only 2 bodies were found, in a valley north of Guba. They were likely executed. 950 Turkmen families fled the areas after IS demanded them to leave.[41] In the same villages three Shiite places of worship were dynamited,[22] and 25 people died during the attacks.[42]
Thousands of Shia Turkmen from Tal Afar fled to Sinjar when Tal Afar fell to ISIS. However, the Islamic State attacked Sinjar, causing many of the Shia Turkmen to flee once again. During theSinjar massacre on August 3, there were many Shia Turkmen among the 50,000 Yazidis trapped atMount Sinjar.[43] On 7 August, an additional 100 Turkmen males were executed inSinjar.[29]
A total of 600 Turkmen women were captured and used as sex slaves by IS. Around 400–500 of them were sent to IS's makeshift prisons inSyria. In February 2018, a group of women protested outside a UN Human Rights Office inKirkuk. They held signs and demanded that the Iraqi government do something to recover around 450 missing Turkmen women, but the protest was ignored.[44] Hasan Turan, leader of the ITF, feared that if the Turkmen women were to return, they would likely become victims ofhonor killings by their families. He stated that "Many girls won't return, and I can only hope their families still accept them if they return. They are the victims." Later in 2018, the UN formally recognized the sexual slavery of Turkmen women.[9][18] An unnamed Turkmen woman, from the small town of al-Alam nearTikrit, who survived IS, toldBBC Turkish that IS separated the single girls from the married women, and began to rape the single girls in front of everyone. ISIS also raped the town's onlyTurkish language teacher to the point that she died.[45] Many Iraqi Turkmen and human rights organizations stated that the Islamic State's genocide on Iraqi Turkmen was fueled byAnti-Turkism, andAnti-Shi'ism.[46][47]
The Islamic State specifically burning Shia Turkmen women alive had become such a regular occurrence that many Turkmen women who were captured by the Islamic State pretended to be Sunni or Arab in hopes of more leniency.[48]
Children were also victims of kidnapping usually for training reasons. In Nineveh on 13 March, 25 Turkmen children between 10 and 17 years old were kidnapped from the Bara'am orphanage and sent to children training camps in Talafar.[49]
In March, a mass grave belonging to 16 Turkmen was found in Bashir, near Kirkuk.[50] The same month, IS executed 9 Turkmen widows in Qara Quyan, Nineveh, whose husbands were killed by jihadists. The reason for their execution was their refusal to marry IS fighters.[51] In the village of Birawchi, IS kidnapped two Turkmen after killing 23 residents of the village. In Guba and Shrikhan, 60 Turkmen boys and men were abducted. On the same month, a young Turkmen named Erhan Camci was kidnapped from his house in Kirkuk.[38]
In April 2015, an Iraqi Turkmen MP disclosed that over 400 Iraqi Turkmen, mostly women and children, had been kidnapped by IS over the past few months. In February 2016, another politician confirmed them to be 416 individuals, most of whom were never seen again and believed to have been raped and killed.[52]
In August, in Mosul, IS publicly executed 700 Iraqi Turkmen, accusing them of beingRafida.[53]
A single 2015 IS car bombing inSaladin province took the lives of 40 Turkmen. The ITF stated that the IS attacks on Iraqi Turkmens was a strategicethnic cleansing campaign.[4] 540 Turkmen civilians from Tal Afar went missing, including 125 women, again at the hands of IS, and only 22 of them were found again.[54]
In summer 2015, around 3,000 Turkmen fled the town of Amirli. In late 2015, around 7,500 Turkmen fled toKarbala.[55]
Taza Khurmatu, with 40,000 residents, all Turkmen, was attacked by ISIS from March 7 to March 9. ISIS fired over 200 rockets, katyushas, and mortars, and used chlorine and mustard gas. The chemical weapons affected 7,000 people, 167 so severely that they had to be taken to Turkey for treatment. 25,000 fled from the town. In the same year, the village of Bashir was also attacked with chemical weapons.[56][57] In May 2016, the Peshmerga and Iraqi Shia militias captured Bashir, which returned to Iraqi government control.[58] 90% of Bashir was destroyed during its retake in 2016, including 250 houses.[59] In the village of Bashir, 9 Turkmen women were kidnapped, raped, killed, and had their bodies displayed lampposts. Afterwards, a 12-year-old girl was raped by multiple ISIS militants and hung on an electricity pole. When the residents tried to retrieve her body, ISIS snipers opened fire, killing 15 men. Rape cases were recorded after the fall of Tuz Khurmatu on June as well.[60]
On January a mass grave in Rashidiya, near Mosul was found by Iraqi Armed Forces. The grave belonged to 27 massacred Turkmen men and boys. Their bodies had traces of torture.[61] After the defeat of the Islamic State, there wereextrajudicial killings of Sunni Turkmen by the Iraqi Army.[16] Shia Turkmen militias in Tuz Khurmatu harassed, kidnapped, arbitrarily detained, tortured, and killed Sunni Arab civilians, while looting and destroying their houses. Furthermore, Shia Turkmen militias blocked the return of Sunni Arab residents in Tuz Khurmatu and Kirkuk. Shia Turkmen militias also targeted Sunni Turkmen. Locals from the mixed neighborhoods of Tuz Khurmatu estimated that in March 2018, only 5-10 percent of the original Sunni Arab population and 10 percent of the original Sunni Turkmen population remained. Shia Turkmen attacks on Sunni Arab and Sunni Turkmen communities were fewer in areas outside of Tuz Khurmatu, as there were few Sunni Turkmen or Sunni Arabs left. Nearly all Shia Turkmen of Amirli returned by March 2018, although no Arabs or Sunni Turkmen (an estimated 15,000 families or more) had returned to areas controlled by the PMF. Shia Turkmen militias engaged in significant destruction of homes and property of Sunni Turkmen while they were absent. The destruction of Sunni Arab and Sunni Turkmen property showed patterns of an effort to permanently change the demographics in favor of Shia Turkmen, according to some human rights groups and local informants.[62] In Tuz Khurmatu, there were also clashes between Sunni Kurds and Shia Turkmen.[63] In Tal Afar, which came under the control of the PMF, there was increased tensions between the Sunni Turkmen and Shia Turkmen inhabitants of the city. Shia Turkmen supported the Shia Turkmen militias allied to Iran, while Sunni Turkmen supported parties allied to Turkey. The tensions were part of the Iran-Turkey proxy conflict and reached a point to where Recep Tayyip Erdoğan threatened military involvement to protect Sunni Turkmen interests.[64] By 2017, around 1,200 Turkmen women, girls and children kidnapped by the Islamic State remained missing.[23]
Various scholars and Iraqi Turkmen organizations stated that the violence met the definition of genocide under Article II of the1948 Genocide Convention and called for official recognition.[65] In 2017, the Parliament of Iraq officially recognized the genocide,[66][67] and in 2018, theUnited Nations officially recognized the sexual slavery of Iraqi Turkmen women.[68][69]
IS is responsible for the destruction of historical artifacts that were important to Iraqi Turkmen. Many century-old mosques, whether Sunni or Shia, as well as libraries were destroyed. The oldest library in Tal Afar was blown up, while another library with over 1,500 historical books in Diyala was destroyed. Among the destroyed artifacts were theMausoleum of Yahya Abu al-Qasim (built in 1293 by the Zengids, destroyed in 2014), theMausoleum of Imam Awn Al-Din (built in 1248 by the Zengids, destroyed in 2014), the Shrine of Qadib Al-Ban Mosuli (built by the Zengids, destroyed in 2014), theAl-Imam Muhsin Mosque (built by the Seljuks, severely damaged in 2015), theGreat Mosque of al-Nuri (built in 1172 by the Zengids, destroyed in 2017), theImam al-Baher Mosque (built in 1259, destroyed in 2014), and theMosque of the Pasha (built in 1881 by the Ottomans, destroyed).[70][page needed]