The Turkoman parties represent the Turkomans of northern Iraq, an ethnic group with close cultural and linguistic ties to Anatolia.

Many Turkomans live in the area around Mosul and Kirkuk, situated just south of the KDP-administered area of the Kurdish Autonomous Region.

Although many different parties represent the Turkoman, there are two main branches. Both favour a democratic Iraq with freedom for all ethnic minorities, but they have different strategies for attaining it. The Turkoman National Association works in co-operation with the Kurdish authorities, whilst the Iraqi Turkoman Front is backed by Turkey and stands in opposition to the KDP.

The most recent addition to the Turkoman political scene is the Turkoman National Association, established at the beginning of November 2002. It is an umbrella organisation encompassing the Turkoman Cultural Association, Turkoman Brotherhood Party, Turkoman National Liberation Party, Iraqi Turkoman Union Party and Kurdistan Turkoman Democratic Party.

The parties have pledged to maintain their own political agendas, but to present a united front as regards broader issues of national destiny and interests.

In a nod to the authorities administering most Turkomans, a statement read by Jawdat Najjar, head of the Turkoman Cultural Association and a regional minister in the KDP-led regional government, said that the association would foster "fraternal coexistence" and a spirit of "mutual respect" in Iraqi Kurdistan, which, the statement said, were a result of the KDP's work.

The Iraqi Turkoman Front meanwhile, led since February 2001 by San'an Ahmad Agha, has been functioning since 1995, when six Turkoman parties came together to form a coalition.

It enjoys the political backing of Turkey but its contribution to political life in Kurdistan has been viewed by the KDP as Turkish interference in Kurdish affairs. The KDP newspaper Brayati said in October 2002: "The so-called 'Turkoman Front' group, which is acting as an emissary for Turkey, has damaged Turkey's interests in this region."

The Iraqi Turkoman Front headquarters are in KDP-administered Irbil, though it opened an office in Turkey in 1996 and one in London in 1999. It publishes a weekly newspaper, called Turkomaneli, in Arabic and Turkmen.

The front clashed with the KDP in August 1998 and has criticised the party for "arbitrary practices" and "imprisonment, battery and torture" which, it said in August 2002, had become a daily occurrence.

Regarding the front's views on a post-Saddam Iraq, their representative in Turkey, Mustafa Ziya, has said he is in opposition to any plans for a Kurdish state in northern Iraq, particularly one that might adopt Kirkuk as its capital.

Speaking at a conference in Turkey in October 2002, he said: "Certain maps are appearing, showing Kirkuk and Mosul as their [the Kurds'] capital, but in fact we are the owners of the land there.

"We do not have our eye on resources beneath that land, but certain others do. Today, a Kirkuk problem is being experienced in terms of who is going to possess that area. But it is the people who live there who will possess it."

Tension with the major Kurdish parties over the Turkish government's threat to send troops into northern Iraq led to angry anti-Turkish demonstrations in Kurdish towns in March 2003. The Iraqi Turkoman Front described the protests as "an uncivilised phenomenon".

The outbreak of war a few weeks later appeared at first to have confirmed Kirkuk's position as a potential ethnic flashpoint. Turkoman leaders accused Kurdish peshmerga fighters of "massacres" when they entered the city with US forces. Kurdish leaders denied the charges, which were widely broadcast in the Turkish media. ITF officials also said that their representatives had been "excluded" from the new city council in Kirkuk, in favour of Turkoman leaders close to the Kurdish forces.

BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.