“Kerkuk, an oil center laying 180 miles north of Baghdad had been Turkish through and through in the not too distant past”

Hanna Batatu
“The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq”, Princeton University Press, New Jersey 1978, page 913.

“When the government proposed to apply the 1957 census to Kerkuk, Mulla Mustafa refused it, since this was bound to show that the Turkmen, although outnumbered in the governorate as a whole, were still predominant in Kerkuk town”.

David McDowall
“A Modern History of the Kurds”, (I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd Publishers, London & New York 1996), p. 329.

“The original population of Kerkuk City were Turkmen and the Kurds were more recent incomers. The Turkmen had always dominated the socio-economic and political life of the Kerkuk city.”

Marion Farouk
Iraq since 1958 – From Revolution to dictatorship, IB Tauris &co. Ltd, London 2001, p 70 – 72.

“Kerkuk is the main center of Turkmen Population and before the war possessed 30,000 inhabitants. Several villages in its vicinity are also Turkmen speaking.

Willima Rupert Hay
“Two Years in Kurdistan 1918 – 1920”, (William Clowes and Sons, Limited, London and Beccles 1921), p. 81.