 Despite the popular reference to the Turks of Iraq as "Turkmen", they are not directly related to the Turkmen people of Turkmenistan and do not identify as such.Today, the Iraqi Turkmen form the third largest ethnic group in Iraq, after the Arabs and Kurds.According to the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, in 2013, the Iraqi Turkmen population numbered 3 million out of Iraq's 34.7 million inhabitants.