ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - More than 800 police officers in Kirkuk are being reassigned, the city’s police department said on Friday. A large majority of those affected are reportedly Kurds.

“Our goal is to increase the number of police on the streets,” Kirkuk police spokesperson Amer Nuri told Rudaw, explaining that eventually they want to have the police take over responsibilities now being fulfilled by the army.

Rudaw has learned that a committee from Iraq’s Interior Ministry has ordered the transfer of police officers to technical and emergency units, both operating under the city’s police directorate. According to a list of the affected officers obtained by Rudaw, more than 80 percent of them are Kurdish.

There are concerns that the reassignment could be an effort to push Kurds out of positions of authority.

One police officer who is among those given a new assignment told Rudaw on condition of anonymity that the transfers are meant “to reduce Kurds within the police command and effective stations and bases in Kirkuk city.”

He claimed the move seeks to “marginalize Kurds in Kirkuk Police and send us to peripheral locations.”

The police spokesperson denied that the decision targets any specific ethnic group, saying, “It affects all ethnicities without discrimination.”

Kirkuk is one of Iraq’s most sensitive disputed territories, claimed by both Baghdad and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The city is home to Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmen and sits atop vast oil reserves.

Kurdish Peshmerga forces controlled Kirkuk’s security after the Iraqi army collapsed during the Islamic State (ISIS) offensive in 2014. However, following the Kurdistan Region’s 2017 independence referendum, Iraqi forces and Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) retook control of the city and its oil fields.

The city and province have also been subjected to demographic change. Between 1970 and 1978, Arabs from other parts of Iraq were settled in Kirkuk as part of Saddam Hussein’s Arabization campaign - a policy that remains a major source of tension between Kurds and Baghdad.

After the fall of the Baath regime in 2003, Iraq adopted Article 140 of the constitution to reverse those demographic changes, though full implementation has been repeatedly delayed.

In January, Iraq’s parliament passed a land restitution law to return property confiscated from Kurds and Turkmen during the Baath era. The legislation covers around 300,000 dunams (roughly 750 square kilometers) in Kirkuk and other disputed territories and builds on a 2023 cabinet decision to revoke Baath-era decrees that transferred Kurdish and Turkmen lands to Arab settlers.