“Once again, I urge all the people of Kirkuk to stay in their homes. Staying at your homes guarantees the success of the process,” Taha said in a press conference in Kirkuk.
Iraq on Wednesday began its two-day registration period for the first nationwide census since 1987. The process will provide a detailed demographic data across Iraqi provinces, including data on families, ages, and genders.
Taha reiterated that the process will be used for development purposes and dismissed rumors of plans to alter Kirkuk’s demography.
“I repeat once more, this census will benefit the economic future of Kirkuk, for our budget share, employment, and Kikruk’s share from national electricity,” Taha said.
Rumors circulated on social media of an attempt of changing the demography of Kirkuk through the census after natives of the disputed areas returned en masse to their provinces to be registered as residents of their hometowns.
Some Arab and Turkmen parties released statements calling for a halt of the census in the disputed province due to the Kurdish return.
Taha urged residents to refrain from fueling “sectarianism and nationalism” by spreading such rumors.
“We as the [Kirkuk] administration … we work for a single goal, and that is achieving co-existence among the components and the people of Kirkuk,” he said.
Kirkuk’s Kurdish population is expected to have significantly decreased after the Baath regime's Arabization process and the ousting of the Peshmerga in October 2017 following the Kurdish independence referendum when Iraqi forces re-entered Kirkuk. In the 1957 census, Kurds made up 48 percent of Kirkuk's population, Arabs 28 percent, and Turkmen 21 percent.
Kirkuk, along with other disputed territories in Diyala, Nineveh, and Salahaddin, has a diverse population and was subject to Arabization policies under Saddam Hussein’s rule, where Kurdish inhabitants were displaced and their lands given to Arab settlers. Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution outlines a process for resolving disputes over these territories.
