The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is a political party active in Kurdistan Region and the disputed territories in Iraq. The PUK describes its goals as self-determination, human rights, democracy and peace for the Kurdish people of Kurdistan and Iraq. The PUK is currently under the leadership of Bafel Talabani. The PUK was founded in 1975 by Jalal Talabani, Nawshirwan Mustafa, Fuad Masum, Adel Murad, Ali Askari and Abdul Razaq Feyli. All presidents of Iraq under the 2005 constitution have been from this party.
Barham Salih is an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the eighth president of Iraq from 2018 to 2022.
The Kurdistan Islamic Movement is a Kurdish Islamist party founded in 1987 by Osman Abdulaziz and several other Kurdish Islamic scholars who were all part of the non-political "Union of Religious Scholars" group. The party's main support comes from in and around the town of Halabja. Osman Abdulaziz was appointed as a mufti by the Kurdistan Islamic Movement.
Kurdistan Islamic Union, colloquially referred to as Yekgirtû, is a Kurdish Islamist party in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Kurdistan Toilers' Party was founded in 1985 by Qadir Ezîz and Ebdulxaliq Zengene as a splinter of the short-lived alliance Kurdistan United Socialist Party (HSYK), which had included the Kurdistan Socialist Democratic Party, the Socialist Movement of Kurdistan and the two splinters of the South Kurdistan Movement. They had belonged to the left wing of the party and had criticized the leadership for abandoning socialism in favor of tribal democracy.
Kurdistan Region is an autonomous administrative entity within the Republic of Iraq. It comprises four Kurdish-majority divisions of Arab-majority Iraq: the Erbil Governorate, the Sulaymaniyah Governorate, the Duhok Governorate, and Halabja Governorate. The KRI is bordered by Iran to the east, by Turkey to the north, and by Syria to the west. It does not govern all of Iraqi Kurdistan, and lays claim to the disputed territories of northern Iraq; these territories have a predominantly non-Arab population and were subject to the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns throughout the late 20th century. Though the KRI's autonomy was realized in 1992, one year after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War, these northern territories remain contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Government of Iraq to the present day. In light of the dispute, the KRI's constitution declares the city of Kirkuk as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. However, the KRI does not control Kirkuk, and the Kurdistan Region Parliament is based in Erbil. In 2014, when the Syria-based Islamic State began their Northern Iraq offensive and invaded the country, the Iraqi Armed Forces retreated from most of the disputed territories. The KRI's Peshmerga then entered and took control of them for the duration of the War in Iraq (2013–2017). In October 2017, following the defeat of the Islamic State, the Iraqi Armed Forces attacked the Peshmerga and reasserted control over the disputed territories.
Masoud Barzani is a Kurdish politician who has been leader of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) since 1979, and was President of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq from 2005 to 2017.
The Iraqi Kurdish Civil War was a civil war that took place between rival Kurdish factions in Iraqi Kurdistan during the mid-1990s, mostly between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Democratic Party. Over the course of the conflict, Kurdish factions from Iran and Turkey, as well as Iranian, Iraqi and Turkish forces, were drawn into the fighting, with additional involvement from American forces. Between 35,000 and 40,000 fighters and civilians were killed.
The Kurdistan List, also known as the Kurdistan Alliance or the Brotherhood List, is the name of the electoral coalition that ran in the Kurdistan Regional Government parliamentary elections in Iraqi Kurdistan in July 2009. The Kurdistan List represented a coalition of the two main ruling parties in Iraqi Kurdistan, namely the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. It is the successor of the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party, usually abbreviated as KDP or PDK, is the largest party in Iraqi Kurdistan and the senior partner in the Kurdistan Regional Government. It was founded in 1946 in Mahabad in Iranian Kurdistan. The party states that it combines "democratic values and social justice to form a system whereby everyone in Kurdistan can live on an equal basis with great emphasis given to rights of individuals and freedom of expression."
Nawshirwan Mustafa was an Iraqi Kurdish politician who served as the General Coordinator of the Movement for Change and the leader of the opposition in the Kurdistan Region from 1 April 2009 to his death on 19 May 2017.
Hikmat Muhammad Karim, known as Mala Bakhtiyar or Mala Bakhtiar, is a political leader and a Senior Iraqi Kurdish politician. He is a commander and General of the Kurdish PUK Peshmerga forces and is considered one of the most powerful people in Iraq. Mala Bakhtiar is the former chief of the Executive Bureau of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. He is now the Joint leader of the Supreme political council of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), alongside Kosrat Rasul Ali.
The 2011 Kurdish protests in Iraq were a series of demonstrations and riots against the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraqi Kurdistan. The autonomous region experienced protests that were concurrent with the 2011 Iraqi protests and the wider Arab Spring. The Iraqi Kurdish protests were also related to the 2011 Kurdish protests in Turkey and the 2011–2012 Iranian protests, as well as the civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War.
Parliamentary elections took place in Kurdistan Region on 30 September 2018 to elect Parliament. The election came a year after a failed bid for independence and left the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) with 45 seats, that positioning it to lead the next regional government. Announcement of the results was delayed for three weeks. The KDP's historic rival and junior coalition partner in government, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was in second place with 21 seats. The results suggest that Masoud Barzani’s KDP will take a dominant position in Kurdish politics.
Lahur Talabani, also known as Lahur Sheikh Jangi Talabani was the Co-President of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and the former Director of the Zanyari Agency, and Former Director of the Counter Terrorism Group (CTG). Known commonly as Sheikh Lahur, Talabani was a leading figure in the fight against terror especially in the fight against the Islamic State. After being losing a leadership battle and being ousted from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Lahur proceeded to found his own party, the People's Front.
Parliamentary elections were held in Iraq on 12 May 2018. The elections decided the 329 members of the Council of Representatives, the country's unicameral legislature, who in turn will elect the Iraqi president and prime minister. The Iraqi parliament ordered a manual recount of the results on 6 June 2018. On 10 June 2018, a storage site in Baghdad housing roughly half of the ballots from the May parliamentary election caught fire.
The New Generation Movement or Naway Nwe is an Iraqi Kurdish political party formed to contest the 2018 general election.
Hemin Hawrami, ,, is a Kurdish politician, writer and academic. He has been the Deputy Speaker of the Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament since February 2019. He is a senior member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. He was elected as a Member of the Kurdistan Parliament in September 2018. He was the head of the Kurdistan Democratic Party's foreign relations (2011–2017) and later a senior adviser to President Masoud Barzani (2017–2019) for political and international affairs. He holds a PhD in international relations and he has written eight books in Kurdish on Kurdish politics.
The Kurdistan Region–PKK conflict is a series of battles and clashes in Iraqi Kurdistan between the ruling Kurdistan Regional Government against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and its allied groups. It started in 1983 and is still ongoing in the form of an insurgency. The PKK's primary method is using guerrilla warfare against the Peshmerga.
The People's Front (Kurdish: بەرەی گەل, romanized: Bereyî Gel, is a political party in the Kurdistan Region that was founded by the former co-chair of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, Lahur Sheikh Jangi.
