Last week was quite hot in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Asayish (security) forces closed multiple offices of Tavgari Azadi (Freedom Movement). Tavgari Azadi is a political party based in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and is affiliated with the PKK. The party was formed on October 17, 2014, and has been trying hard to carve its roots in regional politics so that the PKK could find a new route to spread its political influence. The party was formed in 2014 by leading members of the then dissolved Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party (PCDK), which was part of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), or with its more well-known label, the PKK. 

The events occurred rapidly have still not been settled. First, the PUK surrounded the offices of the Tavgari Azadi and gave 24 hours to the party and its affiliated media and civil society organizations to close their offices in Sulaymaniyah. Then, the PUK’s asayish forces initiated an operation to the un-evacuated offices and arrested people resisting the evacuation. The party has already been banned from opening offices in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)-ruled Erbil and Dohuk. And now its offices in Sulaymaniyah, including the towns of Kelar, Kove, Ranya, Kıfri, Raperin, and Kaladize are closed. 

If the PKK is to be removed from the region some day, it must be removed with all its organizations under its umbrella. Thus, the closure of Tavgari Azadi, if sustained and moved forward, is a major step for such a removal.

Although the party is not as big as the KDP and the PUK, this event is not one that should be ignored. Tavgari Azadi is crucial for its capacity to mobilize people for pro-PKK protests under the disguise of legal activities. The party tries to legitimize the PKK and spreads the ideas of the terrorist organization’s cult leader, Abdullah Ocalan, who is currently serving his sentence in Turkey. Hence, if the PKK is to be removed from the region some day, it must be removed with all its organizations under its umbrella. This closure, if sustained and moved forward, is a major step for such a removal.

In his take on the closures, the party’s co-chairman Shilan Shakir spoke to the press and stated that they did not accept the closure decisions because they are a legal party registered in Iraq. The party really is registered in Iraq and even ran for the parliamentary elections on May 12, 2018, and won a seat in parliament. While the party is registered in Iraqi politics, it has faced problems in the Kurdistan Region. Shakir, in his statement, indirectly threatened the regional authorities by claiming that the decision to close their offices is harming Kurdish unity, and further, that this will weaken the PUK. While defending the position that his party is not the political wing of the PKK, Shakir did not feel any need to hide that they have relations with the PKK and that they perceive Ocalan’s ideas as a resolution.

If the PUK works with Turkey in the latter’s campaign to terminate the PKK in Iraq, in return, the PUK can unseal its relations with Turkey, which were initially fragmented due to the PKK’s activities in PUK-controlled areas. 

From the Turkish perspective, the step is a necessary one but it is meaningful if it is just the beginning of a consistent and persistent set of measures against the PKK’s existence in the region. The PKK has no single village under its control and has to hide in the caves in Turkey. Nevertheless, the organization controls vast amounts of territory in Iraq. It calls the places under its control Medya Defense Zones just across the Turkish border. Turkey has also started a quiet but persistent campaign last summer in Northern Iraq targeting the PKK controlled areas. Turkey’s campaigns against the PKK over the past decades show that Turkey needs international cooperation to finally terminate the PKK from where it is based. So far, Turkey and Iran seem to agree on this. The PUK’s recent move to close Tavgari Azadi offices in Sulaymaniyah can, for the first time, make the PUK a partner in Turkey’s counterterrorism campaign.

The Kurdish region of Iraq held elections on 30 September – a year after a troublesome period. The elections were planned to take place almost a year earlier on 30 November, 2017, but the troubles the region found itself in caused delays. The region had already been in turmoil, but what put it in the midst of fierce developments was the independence referendum held on 25 September, 2017.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)-led regional government found itself weakened and isolated in the process as Baghdad, Tehran, and Ankara took a common position against the referendum. While Turkey’s position was quite expectable as it is against any kind of de facto secession in the region, Iran used its close ties with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and created a split in the pro-independence regional position of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Eventually, not only did they fail to put the referendum in action, but the KRG also had to leave the disputed territories to the control of Iraq’s central government. Amongst them, the most important and disputed one was Kirkuk, whose governor Najmaddin Kareem (from the PUK) had to flee the city.

After all this mess, the parliamentary elections were finally held on 30 September, but this time the vote count took too long – due to the allegations of fraud by multiple sides. Weeks after the elections, the election commission finally published the results. The KDP received 688 thousand votes and secured 45 seats in the 111-seated parliament. 11 of those seats were reserved for minorities. This is quite a strong presence in the parliament, especially given that the PUK, the second major party in parliament, only received 21.

The third biggest party, Gorran, only secured 12 seats. In other words, the seats of the second and third parties combined still fall short of the KDP seats. Hence, the KDP increased its seats in parliament from 38 to 45 between 2013 and 2018, while the PUK increase stayed marginal, and Gorran faced the hardest blow by losing more than half of its seats.

The September 25 independence referendum escalated the mistrust between the KDP and PUK as both sides blamed each other for betraying the interests of the Kurdistan region. The two established parties of the region also competed in the presidential elections in Iraq earlier this month. PUK’s candidate, Barham Salih, won the election – allegedly with Iran’s use of its influence in Iraqi politics – against his KDP rival, Fuad Hussein, with 219 votes to a mere 22.

The developments illustrate that the KDP and PUK will continue to dominate Iraqi politics. You can essentially read this as the Barzani and Talebani houses continuing their reign on this shaky settlement, a settlement found based on a delicate division of power in the region.

The PUK secured the presidency, with the outside support (of Iran), and the KDP increased its dominance in the regional parliament. This balance of power can still preserve the status quo in the region if Turkey does not change it in favor of the KDP or Iran in favor of the PUK, which is not likely at the moment.

The KDP tried hard to change the status quo with its referendum initiative and nomination of a presidential candidate, but both failed. In response, the PUK is now trying to maintain its position as the second and only other major party in the region, which it achieved with Iran’s support. What is missing in this picture is Turkey’s cross-border strategy of containing and then eliminating the PKK, which at the moment, is not changing the parameters of the KDP-PUK game.

The densely Kurdish populated areas of Iraq obtained political recognition and autonomy from the central government of Iraq with the 2005 Iraqi constitution. This is how the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), originally established in 1992, and Kurdistan Region Presidency, formed in 2005, came to this day. Since then, Masoud Barzani, the president of the KRG, along with many other local political actors, has occasionally stressed the need for the region’s independence. Hence, independence calls are not new for the KRG. They have been made before, but never this loud, never this close. On June 7 Masoud Barzani, after a meeting with the major political parties of the region –with the exception of Gorran (Change Movement) – set the date for the referendum as September 25.

The referendum is planned to be held not only in KRG provinces such as Erbil (Hawler), Duhok, Suleimani, and Halabja but also in areas still claimed by the central government such as the oil-rich province of Kirkuk. The planned referendum will be a cornerstone not only for the KRG but also for the broader region. Nevertheless, there are pressing concerns and conflicts of interests on the referendum, its aftermath and political consequences at the local (KRG), national, and international levels. Here, concerns of the local actors in the KRG-ruled areas are of vital importance.

The upcoming independence referendum seems far from uniting the local actors in the KRG controlled areas. The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) has come first in all the parliamentary elections up to now and is the party of both the regional president Masoud Barzani (since 2005) and the regional prime minister Nechirvan Barzani (since 2012 and previously from 2006 to 2009). While the party is the leading Kurdish political actor of Iraq, it is not uncontested. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Gorran, disappointed with the KDP’s governance in the KRG and Masoud Barzani’s ruling beyond his legally constrained presidential term, made an agreement in May 2016 to join forces for a number of causes, but most importantly for the reactivation of the regional parliament and counterbalancing the KDP. The two parties have more or less stuck to this deal so far despite occasional dissent from within the parties.

The PUK and Gorran, combined, make up 42 seats in the deactivated regional parliament, outnumbering the 38 seats held by the KDP. While the PUK and Gorran seem to embrace the idea of Kurdish independence from Iraq, the two also declared that “complete preparations” for a referendum on independence should be made after the normalization of the parliament, which has not sat since October 2015. Although the PUK and Gorran are concerned about the KDP’s hijacking of an independent Kurdistan, they are also not without problems given that Gorran split from the PUK as a result of internal rifts and has long charged both the KDP and PUK with corruption, on top of its tough rivalry with the PUK, particularly in Suleimani, which both see as their stronghold.

The PUK and Gorran’s deal to act as a bloc is not without problems. Moreover, both of the parties are going through a succession crisis to replace former Iraq president and PUK leader Jalal Talebani, who is in the midst of severe health problems, and the recent death of Gorran leader Nawshirwan Mustafa. Suffering from the absence of such charismatic and experienced leaders, the two parties seem to be far behind Masoud Barzani’s influence over the people of Iraq Kurdistan, the official name of the region according to the 2005 constitution. That’s also the primary reason why the tougher of the two, Gorran prefers a parliamentary system over the KDP’s presidential system proposal. And that is just part of a long list of disputes between the major political parties in the region.

While the three major parties in the Kurdistan Region have serious trust issues and problems on the table, the politics of the region is further troubled with the longstanding existence of the PKK in the region. The PKK has long struggled against the KDP’s authority across the Turkish border and could maintain its own areas up to this day. Yet now it is on the move again to expand at the cost of the KRG’s, particularly, the KDP’s interests.

Since breaking an over two-year long ceasefire with Turkey in July 2015, the PKK has also become more aggressive in Northern Iraq. The PKK could exploit DAESH’s presence to the best of its interests both in Syria and Iraq and now will likely destabilize the region further as the deadly clashes between the PKK affiliated forces and KRG Peshmerga in Sinjar in March 2017 showed. While the KDP and Turkey have had ups and downs in the course of their relationship since the Gulf War of 1991, the KDP, compared to other local actors, has remained the closest entity to an ally for Turkey. Once again Turkey and the KRG under the rule of the KDP are in a win-win game, deepening their commercial ties to an unprecedented degree while cooperating against the PKK. The two governments on the two sides of the border have allied against the PKK’s terror activities against Turkey and ambitions of expansion in the Iraq side of the border.

With its terror camps in Northern Iraq scattered from Metina to Qandil and its relentless use of violence against any adversary, the PKK is a real threat for the KRG’s move towards independence and what comes after. Any definition of statehood makes reference to Max Weber’s classical definition with its emphasis on the monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and the PKK has repeatedly shown that it has no intention to stop challenging the KRG or any other government’s claim on this.

Given the parameters, President Barzani’s call for independence will not be a smooth path. The upcoming referendum on September 25 is likely to exacerbate the existing tensions amongst the Kurdish actors settled in Northern Iraq. Of course, no local actor could directly object to Masoud Barzani’s referendum call, which would threaten the mass support they have. Nevertheless, all the relevant actors in the region, with the natural exception of the KDP, question the timing and aftermath of the expected referendum and express their concern that the referendum is not genuine but a political card being used by the KDP to extend and expand its rule of the KRG.

On the other hand, Masoud Barzani seems to be aware of the risks and opportunities that the post-DAESH Iraq will pose and he is eager not to leave the ground to the endless claims of the PKK while the PUK and Gorran are also trying to counterbalance his de facto supremacy. The referendum and possible independence process gets even more complicated when the non-Kurdish actors –both within and out of Iraq- are taken into account but Masoud Barzani is not naive enough to start a game that he has no chance of winning. Either way, the referendum is a fair game that Barzani dares to play.