Photo: Bilind T. Abdullah / Rudaw

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Azhi Rasul, 20 August, 2024

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - New Kirkuk Governor Rebwar Taha has issued a directive for the province’s administrative units to include the usage of the Turkmen and Syriac languages in all official documents.

“We direct the use of the Turkmen and Syriac languages, in addition to Arabic and Kurdish, in the format of official documents issued by your departments…” Taha said in a statement posted on Monday on the governorate’s Facebook page.

The decision was a “confirmation of the (brotherhood) identity of Kirkuk and the diversity of its esteemed components,” according to the statement, and it applies to all province’s governmental, administrative, and departmental offices and units.

According to the Iraqi constitution, Arabic and Kurdish are the country’s two official languages; however, Iraqis have the right to educate their children in their mother tongue such as Turkmen, Syriac, and Armenian. 

Syriac is used mainly by the country’s Assyrian, Chaldean, and Syriac populations who are predominantly Christian.

The directive was one of Taha’s first since taking his oath of office on Wednesday, a day after receiving the presidential decree from Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid approving his appointment as governor of the disputed and multiethnic province.

He said on Wednesday that his primary objective as governor is to turn the province into an exemplary model for peaceful coexistence.

Taha replaced Rakan al-Jabouri, who had served as acting governor of Kirkuk since the ousting of Kurdish Peshmerga forces in October 2017 when the Iraqi federal government returned to power in the oil-rich province. 

In February 2023, the Iraqi government sent a letter to Jabouri dictating that official letters should be issued in the Kurdish and Arabic languages. 

The ruling also stated that the languages of Kurds, Turkmens, and Assyrians alongside Arabic should be on billboards of public institutions, and teachers should be recruited for Kurdish, Turkmen, and Assyrian schools. 

The federal decree also ordered all Iraqi provinces’ offices of residency, passport, and citizenship to ensure that the Kurdish keyboard is installed on all computers so all identification cards are issued in both the Kurdish and Arabic languages.