Iraq/Kurdistan: Iraqi Oil Ministry Bans Kurdish Language in Documents

Aug 16, 2018 | Irina Slav, Oil Price
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The Iraqi Oil Ministry has banned the use of Kurdish words in official documents, threatening Kurdish employees with lawsuits if they violate the ban, Kurdish media report, citing a document issued earlier this week by a senior Oil Ministry Official. Apparently, the document is a follow-up on another one, issued by the Iraqi Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, which was circulated to all Iraqi institutions in August 2017. Interestingly enough, this was before the historic Kurdistan independence referendum that heated up relations between Erbil and Baghdad and eventually led to Iraqi forces retaking control of the city of Kirkuk and the surrounding fields from the Kurdish Peshmerga.