Kurds are willing to deprive nearly half-a-million displaced people in Kirkuk from voting for their home provinces if Baghdad excludes Kirkuk from taking part in upcoming elections.
Provincial elections have not taken place in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk for 12 years due to rivalries between Turkmen and Arabs on one hand, Kurds on the other.  
Local elections are scheduled to take place in all Iraqi provinces on Sept. 16, 2017, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced on Tuesday. It is not clear whether or not Kirkuk will be included in the polls. Najat Hussein, a Turkmen member of the Kirkuk Provincial Council, claimed that the Iraqi Provincial Council Polls Bill stipulates that Kirkuk’s voter registration system needs to be reviewed before elections can be held.
“Voter registration in Kirkuk should be checked and again all [administrative] positions have to be redistributed,” Hussein said.
Nevertheless, some of the Turkmen and Arabs' stance is that Kirkuk's status should return to its 2003 status and all new neighborhoods, which are mostly dominated by Kurds and created since then, must be demolished.
"When we left Kirkuk there were just six in our family, and now when we return, we are about 50, this is a natural thing," said a Kurdish resident who has returned to Kirkuk since 2003 after they were forcefully evicted from the city by the former Baathist regime.
Kurds are opposed to any decision that would deprive the provinces’ people of voting rights.
“We are just waiting for the inclusion of Kirkuk in this election without discrimination as the bill will be voted for by the parliament,” Governor Najmaldin Karim said.
Officials had said in the past that conditions in both Mosul and the ethnically-mixed city of Kirkuk do not allow fair and accurate polls as both cities have been impacted by the war or massive influx of displaced Iraqis.
Authorities in Kirkuk had previously warned that it would not be acceptable for displaced people in Kirkuk to vote in their home elections from Kirkuk, furthermore, officials in Kirkuk would use this as their trump card to ensure Kirkuk is included in the 2017 elections.
Iraq's High Electoral Commission had ruled out the possibility of holding provincial elections in Kirkuk last year, the commission had announced in a statement in August 2016.