KIRKUK, Iraq — I was just about to press the shutter on my camera outside the Iraqi Turkmen Front’s (ITC) provincial office in Kirkuk, the nerve center of the Turkmen cause in the city, when a security guard holding an automatic rifle emerged from his nearby booth and entered the frame, posing like a hardened warrior under the scorching sun. I should have known that very moment that the Turkmens were taking up arms. Once inside the building, I listened to heated discussions about the future of Turkmeneli (Turkmen lands), driven by the argument that the creation of an armed militia was now inevitable. In a few days, ITC leader Arshad Salihi and his comrades would appear before the press, brandishing arms, and formally announce their decision to form such a force.

The “Sunni insurgency” against Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government, led by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) along with opposition from Sunni tribes, Baathists and some Sufi groups, presented the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) with its long-awaited opportunity to take control of Kirkuk. Kurdish peshmerga took over bases and checkpoints abandoned by the Iraqi army in Kirkuk and assumed control of security in Tuz Khormato, whose Turkmen population is in the majority. The question the Turkmen are now trying to answer is how it is going to respond if the current control by peshmergas, justified for now by the need to provide security against the ISIS threat, becomes permanent? With the Zab River now a de facto border, a poster hanging on Governorate Avenue clearly presents the Kurdish position: “The peshmerga will provide security all over Kurdistan.”

Kirkuk's oil came to light in 1927, leading it to become the scene of a rivalry between Kurds, Turkmens and Arabs. The results of Iraq’s April 30 parliamentary elections in Kirkuk — Kurds won eight of the 13 seats — is a clear indication that the city’s political and demographic landscape has changed in line with KRG aspirations. The Kurds hope that an eventual referendum, envisaged in the constitution but so far deferred, will allow them to annex Kirkuk to Iraqi Kurdistan, while the Turkmens advocate a federal administration run jointly by Turkmens, Kurds and Arabs.

When I arrived at the ITC headquarters, a heavily guarded fortress not far from the ITC provincial office, the party leadership was in the middle of a meeting. A sense of abandonment has prevailed in the ITC after Turkey, opting for strategic ties with the KRG, advised the Turkmens to “act in unison with the Kurds.” The Turkmen community had until now refrained from establishing an armed defense force, relying on Turkey as its guarantor. The Turkmens now appear to have embraced the notion that since Turkey has done away with its red lines, leaving the Turkmens unprotected, they need to set up a militia force.