PUK quits Kurdistan government, threatens to name rival Region president and cabinet

SULAYMANIYAH — The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is quitting the Kurdistan Regional Government and will name its own Region president and cabinet if its rival does, PUK President Bafel Talabani said Thursday night.

He spoke a day after the Kurdistan Democratic Party reconvened the Region’s parliament without the PUK.

“Whatever they do there, we will do here,” Bafel Talabani said. “If they appoint a Region president, we will appoint a Region president.”

He said the PUK would neither recognize the parliament nor any government or post that came out of it, and that the party’s Leadership Council, which met for two hours Thursday, had given him full authority to act. He did not say how a rival administration would work nor if it intended to formally break away and form a separate federal region.

The KDP says parliament met lawfully. Fifty-two of its 100 members attended Wednesday’s sitting, one more than the 51 the law requires, and elected the KDP’s Vala Fareed speaker. Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani said the reopening was not directed against any party and urged the boycotting parties to join, and KDP spokesperson Mahmoud Mohammed blamed the PUK and the New Generation Movement for leaving the parliament idle for two years. The KDP had not responded to Thursday’s speech by the time of publication.

Three lawmakers elected on the PUK’s list in Erbil attended Wednesday’s sitting, and two of them say they have left the party.

Bafel Talabani blamed the KDP for the failure of talks on a new cabinet, saying he had gone to Erbil more than 15 times without result. He called the outgoing government a failure, comparing fuel and oil prices in the Region with Baghdad’s. The PUK has been part of that government since it was formed in 2019, with several ministries and the deputy premiership, held by his brother, Qubad Talabani.

KDP-PUK talks on a new cabinet have repeatedly failed over power-sharing and senior posts, but as recently as mid-September both sides were talking up a deal. Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani said then that the talks were moving in the right direction, Qubad Talabani said he hoped for a final agreement soon, and Mohammed said he expected the obstacles to be removed “in the coming days.”

Earlier Thursday, several PUK officials in the cabinet wrote on Facebook that they would abide by the party’s decision, before a decision had been announced.

His threat evokes a split the two parties formally ended in 2006, when they merged the rival administrations they had run from Erbil and Sulaymaniyah since their 1994 to 1998 civil war. In the video statement, he said the PUK would not let “a drop of anyone’s blood be shed in Kurdistan.”

Iraq’s constitution has no procedure for part of an existing region to break away. Article 117 recognizes the Kurdistan Region and its existing authorities as a federal region, and Article 119 lays out how governorates can form a new region. The parliament elects the Region’s president, a post Nechirvan Barzani has held since 2019.

The Peshmerga’s command structure still follows the old party line. The forces were formally unified under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs in September, but in two area commands, one for Erbil and Duhok and the other for Sulaymaniyah and Halabja.

No party won a majority in the October 2024 election: the KDP took 39 of the 100 seats, the PUK 23 and New Generation 15. The PUK and New Generation have formed a 38-seat alliance since January. The cabinet led by Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani remains in office because no new one has been formed. Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court has set Dec. 14 to hear a case asking it to declare the KRG a caretaker government.