Dec. 17, 05

Turkish Daily News

ANKARA -- A senior Iraqi Turkmen leader has accused Iraqi Kurds of cheating in Thursday's election in the disputed northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk as remarks from an Iraqi official in Kirkuk have strengthened his allegation that thousands of Kurds were bussed in to swell the Kurdish numbers.

Mustafa Ziya, in charge of foreign affairs for the Iraqi Turkmen Front (ITC) and a former representative of the ITC in Turkey, voiced his uneasiness by saying that a ban on vehicles entering Kirkuk since Friday morning should have been in effect prior to elections, the Anatolia news agency reported.

However, people were brought in from Sulaimaniya, Arbil and neighboring cities to Kirkuk before and on election day in order to cast their votes. Hundreds of thousands of people flowed into Kirkuk from the Kurdish regions. A major violation of election rules is taking place here. While all of the roads in Iraq were closed on the day of elections, those in Kirkuk were open. Then after the elections the roads were closed, Ziya was quoted as saying by Anatolia.

Late on election day, Hassan Toran, a Turkmen member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council, said Turkmen, Arab Sunni and Shiite officials would lodge an official complaint with Iraq's Electoral Commission and demand a new vote under U.N. supervision.

A lot of violations took place. Many [non-Kurdish] voters did not find their names on lists because they were removed. Buses carried in thousands of Kurds from Sulaimaniya and Arbil to vote. Roads between provinces were supposed to be closed, Toran told Reuters news agency.

Ankara has warned, through a written statement released on Thursday by the Foreign Ministry, that elections must be fair and transparent for the post-war Iraqi political process to move forward unhampered.

Foreign Minister Abdullah Gül has recently said U.N.-led efforts were under way to remove from voters' lists the names of those that were registered to vote in Kirkuk despite not originally being from the city.

Kurds have migrated en masse to the oil-rich city in the past several months, a move that Turkey viewed with suspicion as an attempt to distort the demographic structure of the disputed city, which also is home to Turkmens and Arabs.