Why do we never hear about the Turkmen of Iraq?

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

We seem to hear about the Shiite-Kurdish struggle for power, now that the Sunnis generally have refused to take an active part in the new Iraqi government. Iraq apparently will have a Kurdish President while the Shiites will get to have a Shiite Arab Prime Minister.

The Turkmen in Iraq number anywhere from 800,000 to 2,000,000 in Iraq, depending on which census figures you read. They have separate newspapers and television programs in their own native language where they live, primarily in northern Iraq. They are one of the principal minorities in the oil-rich Kirkuk region and are major rivals of the Kurds. They have a militia which they claim numbers 70,000 men and Turkey supports them. They claim to be the third largest group in Iraq, after the Arabs and Kurds.

Ethnic Turkmen had major demonstrations in Kirkuk last August, to protest what they see as a power grab by the Kurds, yet I never heard anything on U.S. television about this. According to this article:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/92471830-BB04-40CC-82D7-2D8C9FA4F43E.htm

"...Hundreds of Turkmen have demonstrated in Iraq's northern oil centre of Kirkuk, protesting against what they say are moves by Kurds in the ethnically divided city to seize their land.

"The demonstration was in protest against the confiscation and control of Turkoman lands by some Kurds who were brought from Kurdistan because they were allegedly deported during the former Iraqi regime," Arshad al-Salhi, spokesman of the Iraqi Turkoman Front from told Aljazeera in a telephone interview from Damascus, Syria. ..."

A book by Christopher Deliso entitled "Among the Others: Encounters with the Forgotten Turkmen of Iraq" describes his 5-day ordeal after having been kidnapped by Turkmen Mujahedeen in Iraq. He describes the fact that some Turkmen are faithful to their ethnicity, others are either Sunni Turkmen or Shiite Turkmen, while yet others are with such groups as Ansar-Al-Islam and are taking part in the insurgency. Apparently, Iraq is far, far more complex and messy than we are told on television.

http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=4185
"...Indeed, it was this experience that confirmed the age-old ethnic allegiances of northern Iraq are undergoing a meltdown under the white-hot glare of American aggression. Though at one point in the book a Turkmen spokesman tells the author that Shi'ite and Sunni Turkmen adhere fundamentally to a common ethnic identity rather than being alienated by religion, the situation is changing. Taylor was kidnapped, after all, by an Islamic extremist group, Ansar al-Islam, which according to the author draws its recruits from the ranks of the Turkmen, Kurds, and Arabs alike. Thus, an ethnic situation that was even before the war hopelessly fractious and complex seems to be mutating further, as the bloody U.S. occupation exacerbates old animosities and rekindles nationalist and religious movements. ..."