NEWSDESK, — Turkish Nationalist Movement Party leader Davlet Bagceli has planned to visit the Kurdish city of Kerkuk and meet with city’s Turkmens during Ramadan festive.
Bagceli who opposes even the term of Kurdistan will follow a risky route to get to Kerkuk in order to avoid a possible Kurdistan stamp on his passport.
He will have to fly to Mosul controlled by Baghdad from where he travels to Kerkuk via Mexmur, instead of flying to Kurdistan Regional Government Hewler, to avoid his passport being stamped by Kurdish authorities.
Kurds in Kerkuk have announced a campaign against his visit. Kurdish activist and journalists demand the city’s mayor to deny the visit.
Campaigners said that his visit is not to celebrate the fest but to divide the city’s ethnic groups and encourage Turkmens into violence.
Kerkuk is a Kurdish city known as the “capital of South Kurdistan” with an ethnically mixed composition. Its oil reserves found after the World War Second made it a good target by the occupying forces of Kurdistan claiming it their own.