Iraq's Kirkuk to reintroduce Turkish as an official language

The Kirkuk governorship in Iraq has announced a decision to again use Turkish as an official language in official correspondence.

It said on Thursday that the Turkish language will also be included in letterheads and seals of official institutions.

“The use of the Turkish language in Kirkuk is a constitutional right,” Mervan al-Ani, an official from the Kirkuk provincial governor's office , told Anadolu.

Chairman of the Turkmen Group in the Iraqi parliament Ersat Salihi urged the “using the Turkish language, the mother tongue of the Turkmens, in official institution signs, correspondences, and seals,” in a letter sent September 11 to Rakan al-Jabouri, the governor of Kirkuk.

Arabic and Kurdish are the two official languages of Iraq, according to the Constitution.

But Turkish and Syriac are considered official languages in administrative areas where they constitute a density of population.