Democratic Party of Kurdistan

This article is about the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Iraq. For its regional branches in other countries, see Democratic Party of Kurdistan (disambiguation)

پارتی دیموکراتی کوردستان (Kurd.) Partiya Demokrata Kurdistanê الحزب الديمقراطي الكردستاني (Arabic) Democratic Party of Kurdistan
Party leader	Masud Barzani
founding	August 16, 1946
Headquarters	Hewlêr
Alignment	Kurdish nationalism , liberalism , conservatism
Colours)	Yellow , red
Parliament seats	In the Council of Representatives: 25 out of 325 In the Kurdistan Parliament : 45 out of 111
Website	www.kdp.info

Democratic Party of Kurdistan ( Kurdish پارتی دیموکراتی کوردستان Partiya Demokrata Kurdistanê ; PDK ) is a Kurdish party that has been led by Masud Barzani since 1979 . The party was founded on August 16, 1946 and, along with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), is the first large Kurdish party in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region .

DPK in Iraq

Mustafa Barzani , who led several successful revolts against the government in Baghdad , founded the DPK in 1946. It was founded in Iranian Kurdistan in connection with the emergence of a Kurdish republic in Mahabad , which existed for less than a year.

In its program adopted in 1960, it referred to the concept of Kurdayetî , a Kurdish-nationally inspired mass movement that was not a creation of parties or people, but an objectively existing historical movement. At the present time it represents broad sections of the Kurdish population , especially in the ARK ( Autonomous Region of Kurdistan ).

The DPK became the leading political force in the Erbil region in particular . In 1964, an armistice was signed with the Iraqi President Abd as-Sallam Arif , which recognized the national rights of the Kurds in Iraqi Kurdistan . This led to disputes within the DPK. The political office of the DPK, headed by Jalal Talabani and Ibrahim Ahmed (Talabani's father-in-law), criticized the fact that this agreement did not sufficiently take into account the rights of the Kurds. Barzani, in turn, completely refused to negotiate with Baghdad, then called a separate congress and appointed a new Politburo . The original Politburo split off and its members fled to the east of the country and Iran after an attack by the Barzani-Peshmerga . After the autonomy agreement with Baghdad in 1970/74, the party split and after Mustafa Barzani's death in 1979 his sons Masud and Idris Barzani took over the leadership.

The group around Talabani finally returned to northern Iraq in the 1970s, founded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in 1975 and established their own rulership based in Sulaimaniyya , the Sorani-speaking area of ​​southern Kurdistan. Since then the two parties have repeatedly fought within the Kurds. As a result of the Iraqi-Iranian agreement of Algiers , Barzani's DKP lost the support of the Shah regime, during the Iraqi-Iranian war the DKP fought alongside the Iranian Ayatollah regime from 1983. The central government promoted the fighting between the factions with funds and weapons for the Ahmad / Talabani group until 1985 and appointed Taha Muhi ad-Din Maʿruf, a representative of the Ahmad / Talabani group, as vice-president.

After the Second Gulf War , the DPK started an uprising against the Iraqi government and became a fairly powerful opposition group against Saddam Hussein . The DPK's Peshmerga were able to operate relatively unmolested in the no-fly zone in northern Iraq. With the support of Saddam Hussein, however, the DPK fought in the DPK-PUK conflict from 1994 to 1997 against the PUK, which was supported by Iran . Around 3,000 people were killed between the PUK and DPK parties in Iraq. There used to be major conflicts between the PKK and the DPK.

To elect a transitional parliament after the Iraq war , the DPK joined forces with the PUK and other smaller parties to form the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan (also known as the Kurdish Alliance ). The electoral alliance won 25.7% in the election on January 30, 2005 and thus 71 out of a total of 275 seats in the Iraqi National Assembly, which is to work as a transitional parliament for a constitution. In the new Iraqi government , 8 members of the Kurdish Alliance are ministers.

According to its own statements, the DPK is not aiming for a sovereign Kurdish state or for unification with the Turkish or Iranian part of Kurdistan, but rather internal autonomy within a federal Iraq.

On September 25, 2017, Masud Barzani, President of the ARK, held an independence referendum in the areas ruled by the ARK. More than 92% of the population are said to have voted for independence. Iraq then let its troops march into the areas disputed between the ARK and the central government, so, among other things, Kirkuk and the Mosul dam came back under Baghdad control. Thereupon Masud Barzani resigned from the presidency of the ARK on November 1, 2017.

In the elections to the Iraqi parliament on May 12, 2018, the KDP is said to have won 25 seats in the Iraqi parliament, according to initial projections, but the opposition suspected electoral fraud.

"Neo-DPK" and other spin-offs

Haschim Aqrawi led the pro-Iraqi wing of the KDP and became the autonomous region's first head of government in 1974

In addition, further DPK offshoots emerged from the Ahmad / Talabani faction between 1970 and 1975 and formed a governing coalition with the Iraqi Baath party as part of the National Progressive Front . E.g. the Kurdish Revolutionary Party under Abd as-Sattar Sharif and Ibrahim Tahir Salam , the Progressive Kurds movement under Abdullah Ismail or the so-called Neo-DPK under the leadership of Barzani's eldest son Ubaidallah , Aziz Aqrawi , Haschim Aqrawi and Ahmad Muhammad Said al-Atrushi .

Offshoot

There are several parties with the same name in other countries:

• Kurdistan-Iran Democratic Party - Was previously founded in Iran.
• Kurdistan-Syria Democratic Party - an offshoot in Syria
• Democratic Party of Kurdistan-Turkey also PDK-Bakur - an offshoot in Turkey

Others

The name of the party newspaper is Khabat; in 2007 it had a print run of 5000 copies.

literature

• Marion and Peter Sluglett: Iraq since 1958 - From Revolution to Dictatorship . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1991

Web links

• DPK website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ What is KDP? Retrieved August 4, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Andrea Fischer-Tahir: "We gave many martyrs". Resistance and collective identity formation in Iraqi Kurdistan, ISBN 978-3-89771-015-3 , Münster 2003, p. 67
3. ↑ kdp.se
4. ↑ 92 percent vote for independence for Kurdistan . In: sueddeutsche.de . September 27, 2017, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed August 4, 2018]).
5. ↑ Iraq's Kurdish President Barzani resigns - derStandard.at. Retrieved August 4, 2018 . 
6. ↑ Election in Iraq: Surprise in Baghdad, electoral fraud in Kurdistan - derStandard.at. Retrieved August 4, 2018 . 
7. ↑ How big the split-off groups actually were is controversial. While Kurdish and now Western experts mostly tend to classify them as an influential minority, some East German orientalists ( Lothar Rathmann , Gerhard Höpp , Martin Robbe ) maintained, at least until 1988, that this wing represented the majority of the former DPK members (cf. . Walter Markov , Alfred Anderle , Ernst Werner , Herbert Wurche: Small Encyclopedia world history , Volume 1, page 490. Leipzig 1979)
8. ↑ Years of apprenticeship in the mountains, years of maturity in the cities - the Kurdish press in Iraq is free and diverse, but not independent , article by Rainer Hermann from the FAZ of July 26, 2004