The 1997 census states that there was 600,000 Iraqi Turkmen out of a total population of 22,017,983, forming 2.72% of the total Iraqi population; however, this census only allowed its citizens to indicate belonging to one of two ethnicities, Arab or Kurd, this meant that many Iraqi Turkmens identified themselves as Arabs (the Kurds not being a desirable ethnic group in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq), thereby skewing the true number of Iraqi Turkmen.