ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kirkuk provincial council is set to hold an extraordinary session on Saturday to elect a new Turkmen governor after the incumbent, also a Turkmen, was appointed to a ministerial position in Baghdad, councilors said.
Council members have been notified that the body will convene on Saturday afternoon to elect a new governor, with two Kurdish councilors telling Rudaw’s Malik Mohammed that Kahtan Vendavi, head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front’s (ITF) Kirkuk branch, is the leading candidate for the position.
The governorship of the province is subject to a rotational agreement signed between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and two Arab parties in 2024. The two sides agreed to split the post into two-year terms, but subsequent political arrangements brought the ITF into the agreement, with the Arab parties agreeing to allocate eight months of their share to the Turkmen party.
Mohammed Samaan Agha, a senior Turkmen politician, was elected governor of Kirkuk in April after the PUK’s Rebwar Taha resigned following 20 months in office.
Samaan Agha was appointed minister of state for minorities’ affairs in mid-October. Since then, Turkmen parties have been discussing a replacement, but disagreements over a single candidate have delayed the election of a new governor. Under the power-sharing agreement between the PUK and the Arab parties, the post is due to be handed over to the Arabs in January.
Parwin Fatih, a PUK member of the provincial council, told Rudaw on Friday that “an agreement has been reached to appoint Kahtan Vendavi of the Turkmen Front as governor."
Hassan Majid, a councilor from the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.
Vendavi has headed the ITF’s Kirkuk branch since 2024.
The Kirkuk provincial council has 16 seats, with Kurds holding seven (five for the PUK and two for the KDP), Arabs six, Turkmen two, and Christians one quota seat.
Iraq’s next provincial council elections are due in 2027, but an exact date has not yet been officially announced.
