Kirkuk council elects Turkmen Front’s Qahtan al-Wandawi as governor

KIRKUK — Qahtan al-Wandawi, head of the Iraqi Turkmen Front’s Kirkuk branch, pledged on Saturday to back Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s plans for Kirkuk after the provincial council elected him governor.

Wandawi, the only candidate, won 14 of 15 votes in an emergency session, council member Shokhan Hussein said. He replaces Mohammed Samaan, who joined the federal cabinet in October and whose resignation the council accepted at the same session.

“We will work with the government team to develop Kirkuk governorate,” Wandawi told a news conference after the vote. He said he supported Zaidi’s vision and program for meeting the governorate’s demands.

He said much work lay ahead to improve services, the economy and development in Kirkuk. “We know how difficult the challenges are, but we are determined to keep the partnership united,” he said.

The Turkmen Front nominated Wandawi to serve out the Turkmen community’s term in the governorship under a power-sharing agreement. That term runs to the end of the year, council sources told 964media.

Wandawi was born in Kirkuk in 1975 and works as an assistant teacher for the Kirkuk Education Directorate, according to his biography. He holds a bachelor’s degree in business administration and a master’s in international trade and logistics.

He has led the Turkmen Front’s Kirkuk branch since 2022, after three years as its deputy head, and has sat on the party’s central committee since 2010. He headed the Turkmen Education Center in 2017 and came second on the Turkmen Front’s list in parliamentary elections, with 11,257 votes.

Earlier Saturday, Samaan met Wandawi and a delegation of political figures ahead of the session, his office said in a statement.

Parliament approved Samaan as a minister of state on Oct. 15, which reopened talks over who would replace him. The Turkmen Front considered two candidates, Wandawi and political bureau member Mardin Gokkaya, before settling on Wandawi.

The council had planned to vote Wednesday, but the session was postponed twice. One reason was that some members were in Baghdad for talks with political parties, the council’s media official Saadoun Sultan told 964media. The council then called Saturday’s emergency session.

Samaan was elected governor on April 16, the first Turkmen in the post in more than a century. He replaced Rebwar Taha of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, who was elected in August 2024 under an agreement reached in Baghdad to rotate the governorship among Kirkuk’s Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab communities.

The deal came after long negotiations that followed the December 2023 provincial council elections. Under it, the Kurdish community held the governorship first and the Turkmen second. An Arab governor is due to take over in January 2027.

Kirkuk’s 16-member council has seven Kurdish members, six Arab members, two Turkmen and one member elected on the Christian quota seat. Disputes over how senior posts are shared out have repeatedly held up political deals in the ethnically mixed governorate. Wandawi is Kirkuk’s third governor this year, after Taha and Samaan.

This article has been updated