The official sign for one of Kirkuk courts has been updated and written in Arabic only, after the old one included inscription in Kurdish, Turkmen and Syriac languages as well.
The new sign for court of Daquq district, 44 km south of Kirkuk, was installed this week, and according to KirkukNow information, the new sign was sent by House of justice in Kirkuk.
KirkukNow reporter on Thursday, January 13, took a photo of the new sign, but admin and judicial staff denied commenting.
A source in Daquq District Administration denied that the administration had installed the new sign. "We are not aware of this issue and it has nothing to do with us."
But a source in the Daquq court told KirkukNow "the sign was sent to us from the Kirkuk court."
The old sign of court of Daquq included Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and Syriac languages.
The old sign of Daquq court building was written in four languages, Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and Syriac.
This comes at a time when the issue of deleting the Kurdish language from signs, addresses and traffic signs inside the city of Kirkuk sparked widespread protests, which resulted in the removal of these signs.
What happened was in violation of a decision by Rakan al-Jibouri, Kirkuk’s acting governor, issued on September 1, 2021, in which he stressed the need for public signs in Kirkuk to include the four languages of the province, based on the Iraq Languages Law of 2014 and the decision of the Iraqi Federal Court in 2008.
The Iraqi constitution stipulates that Arabic and Kurdish are the official languages in Iraq, and Turkmen and Syriac are official languages in the administrative units in which they constitute the majority of the population.
The local administration of Kirkuk said in a statement on January 2nd that (Arabic, Kurdish, Turkmen and Syriaclanguages to be adopted in public boards and all roads, bridges, and administrative units of Kirkuk province.
"Any act other than the instructions and controls above for the administration of Kirkuk, whether for the identification boards of the circuits or for the indication boards of traffic, roads, bridges, or the municipality is considered sabotage and incitement."
Kirkuk administration called on the security forces, "to take the utmost accountability against those who act contrary to the instructions and measures."
KirkukNow was not able to obtain statements on the matter from the Kirkuk Court.
Kirkuk, Iraq’s second largest reserves, located 238 kilometers north of Baghdad, is an ethnically mixed province for 1,7 million Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens. It has long been at the center of disputes between Baghdad and the Erbil.
Kurds were holding the senior position in Kirkuk including governor of Kirkuk up to October 2017 Iraqi troops ousted the Kurdish forces following declaration of victory over the Islamic State in Iraq and Levant ISIL.
Back in 2018, the Turkmens and Arabs each have got each three seats of the 12 parliamentary seats of Kirkuk and the rest six has gone to the PUK, one of the key Kurdish parties and stakeholder of the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government KRG along with its decades’ ally-competitor Kurdistan Democratic Party KDP which boycotted elections in Kirkuk.
In October 10th general elections, Turkmen candidates have won two seats while the Arabs have got four seats. PUK has lost half of its seats, 2 to KDP and one for the New Generation.
Currently, Iraqi army, local and federal police, Brigade 61 of Special Forces along with Shiite paramilitary of Popular Mobilization Forces PMF, are under Kirkuk joint operations’ command, an umbrella for the security forces running the security of Kirkuk province.
