BAGHDAD: Iraq’s ethnically-mixed and contested city of Kirkuk was on a nighttime curfew on Tuesday after clashes erupted there the previous night between Kurds and Turkmen amid preparations for the controversial Kurdish independence referendum next week, a local Turkmen official said.
The Iraqi Kurds plan to hold the referendum on Sept. 25 in three governorates that make up their self-ruled region, as well as in disputed areas that are controlled by Kurdish forces but claimed by Baghdad, including the oil-rich province of Kirkuk.
Baghdad, Turkey, Iran and the international community have rejected the vote and asked the Kurds to call it off to avoid further destabilizing the region.
Shortly after sunset Monday, gunmen on motorcycles opened fire on one of the offices of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, Mohammed Samaan Kanaan, in charge of the Front’s offices, told The Associated Press over the phone. The guards returned fire, killing one and wounding two of the assailants, Kanaan added.
Hours later, a police patrol that included the brother of the slain assailant attacked another office, triggering clashes, Kanaan said. The fighting ended when a large ethnically mixed force reached the scene. No casualties occurred in the second bout of clashes.
Local Kurdish officials and officials in Baghdad were not immediately available to comment on the clashes or the curfew.
Kirkuk is home to Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and Christians. Kurdish forces took control of the province and other disputed areas in the summer of 2014, when the Daesh group swept across northern and central Iraq and the Iraqi armed forces crumbled.
On Monday, Iraq’s top court temporarily suspended the northern Kurdish region’s referendum on independence, saying it “issued a national order to suspend the referendum procedures ... until the resolution of the cases regarding the constitutionality of said decision.”
The move is just the latest in a number of rulings from Iraq’s central government attempting to stop the vote. On Sept. 12, Iraq’s parliament voted to reject the referendum and on Sept. 14, lawmakers voted to dismiss the ethnically mixed Kirkuk province’s Kurdish governor who supports the referendum.
Despite strong opposition from Baghdad, regional leaders and the United States — a key ally of Iraq’s Kurds — Kurdish officials have continued to pledge that the vote will be held.
Clashes erupt in Iraqi city of Kirkuk over Kurdish vote
Clashes erupt in Iraqi city of Kirkuk over Kurdish vote
’We can’t make ends meet’: civil servants protest in Ankara
- Some 800 civil servants from the Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions joined a march to the labor ministry
- “The increase in rents is almost three times higher than the pay rise we received,” Kocak told demonstrators
ANKARA: Hundreds of angry civil servants marched through Ankara Wednesday demanding a realistic pay rise as they battle poverty amid the soaring prices and double-digit inflation.
Some 800 civil servants from the Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions (KESK) joined a march to the labor ministry in the Turkish capital, carrying banners demanding an immediate pay rise.
“The increase in rents is almost three times higher than the pay rise we received, meaning our salaries are not even enough to cover the rent increases alone,” Ayfer Kocak, KESK’s co-chair, told demonstrators outside the ministry.
“We are experiencing growing poverty and insecurity.”
Turkiye’s annual inflation rate fell to 30.89 percent in December from 44.38 percent a year earlier, official figures showed, but independent economists and unions say real numbers remain much higher.
According to December figures released by the Confederation of Turkish Trade Unions (TURK-IS), the absolute minimum needed to feed a family of four was just over 30,000 liras ($690).
At the same time, Turkiye’s poverty threshold — the sum required to cover the basic needs for a family of that size — had risen to 98,000 liras ($2,270), it said.
Food inflation approached 43 percent annually, it added.
- ‘We can’t make ends meet’ -
“The government is condemning civil servants to live in degrading conditions by relying on misleading data” from the official statistics agency TUIK, Tulay Yildirim, head of a local teachers’ union branch, told AFP.
“We workers’ voices to be heard, saying we can no longer make ends meet and want to receive our fair share of a budget created through taxes paid by all citizens,” she added.
Earlier this month, public sector wages were hiked by 18.6 percent for the next six months, an increase unions said was insufficient.
“There are not only workers here, but also pensioners. The salary increase granted falls below the poverty line,” said Osman Seheri, head of a local branch of the municipal workers’ union.
“We cannot even afford proper clothes to go to work, let alone a suit and tie. With such wages, it is impossible to live in a major city.”
According to the independent Inflation Research Group (ENAG), which challenges the official data, annual inflation in Turkiye reached 56.14 percent in December 2025, with prices rising 2.11 percent in December alone.
