On 12 May, quadrennial elections for Iraq’s 329-seat Council of Representatives (CoR) took place in each of its eighteen governorates. In Kirkuk, twelve seats were in play. Results tabulated by the local branch of Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) on the evening of 12 May and transmitted electronically to Baghdad indicated that the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) had won half those seats, with the remainder divided evenly between the Iraqi Turkmen Front and the Kirkuk Arab Coalition.

This outcome in itself would not have been surprising: people generally (though not necessarily) vote by their ethnicity, and Kurds are the largest ethnic group in the governorate. In previous parliamentary elections, the overall results were similar.

When IHEC announced the final results, Arab and Turkmen groups staged protests over what they saw as manipulated ballot boxes, and demanded a recount; these protests are continuing and could trigger violence. It is usual for losers in a contest to challenge the result as well as the process, but in this case there seem to be grounds for questioning both. In a statement on 17 May, the head of UNAMI, Special Representative to the UN Secretary-General Jan Kubis, called on IHEC “to act expeditiously in order to seriously address all complaints including, as necessary, the conduct of partial manual recount in selected locations, notably in Kirkuk”.

The core of the problem is that Kirkuk’s Arabs and Turkmen suspect that sooner or later a Kurd-dominated provincial council will seek a vote on Kirkuk’s status and attempt to bring the governorate and its oil fields into the Kurdish region; and that this means they may end up living in an independent Kurdish state, an outcome they say they reject.

Leaders in Baghdad and Erbil have indicated to Crisis Group their willingness to return to talks about the disputed territories and revenue sharing once new governments are in place in both capitals.

Reporter’s code: 50101