 The Iraqi Turkmen were targeted by the British in collaboration with other Iraqi elements, of these, the most willing to subjugate the Iraqi Turkmen were the Iraq Levies—troops recruited from the Assyrian community that had sought refuge in Iraq from the Hakkari region of Turkey.The spark for the conflict had been a dispute between a Levi soldier and an Iraqi Turkmen shopkeeper, which was enough for the British to allow the Levies to attack the Iraqi Turkmen, resulting in the massacre of some 200 people.The Kirkuk massacre of 1959 came about due to the Iraqi government allowing the Iraqi Communist Party, which in Kirkuk was largely Kurdish, to target the Iraqi Turkmen.