The story: Iraqi Kurdistan’s power-sharing administration has lost one of its two pillars. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) has announced its withdrawal from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). This comes a day after the rival Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) reopened the Kurdistan Parliament despite a PUK boycott. The latter’s leader has threatened to name his party’s own KRG leadership if the KDP fills the posts alone, reviving the prospect of two rival administrations.

The coverage: PUK leader Bafel Talabani announced the withdrawal from the semi-autonomous region’s government in a video message on the evening of Nov. 5, describing the outgoing cabinet as “failed.”

  • Talabani said his party would appoint its own president for the Kurdistan region if the KDP named one without the PUK’s buy-in, warning that “whatever they do there, we will do here.”

  • The PUK leader also vowed in the same speech not to recognize “any parliamentary session or anything that emerges from this.” Several PUK cabinet members had pledged on Facebook earlier that day to abide by the party leadership’s decision before it was announced.

The leader of the Erbil-based KDP, Masoud Barzani, urged the boycotting parties on Nov. 4 to rejoin the Kurdistan Parliament. After the withdrawal, KDP figures and a senior KRG official hit back at the PUK.

  • KDP member Subhi Al-Mandalawi called Talabani’s announcement “hasty and ill-considered” in comments to Saudi-owned Al-Hadath TV on Nov. 6.

  • A senior KRG official rejected any move to separate the PUK stronghold of Sulaimaniyah the same day, telling Abu Dhabi-based The National that the Kurdistan region “is not the property of any individual or political party.”

  • The night before, fellow KDP member Mohammed Zangana claimed that a secret meeting with Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf lay behind the PUK leader’s threat to break away.

The PUK had warned on Nov. 3 that it would not recognize “any parliament or government resulting from such sessions” if lawmakers were swayed through vote-buying, threats and psychological pressure. The Nov. 4 regional parliamentary session the KDP requested went ahead regardless.

  • Interim Speaker Mohammed Sulaiman of the opposition New Generation Movement (NGM), the PUK’s partner in the boycott, told KDP-affiliated outlet Rudaw the same day that he had not authorized the session.

  • Of the parliament’s 100 lawmakers, 52 voted for the KDP’s Vala Fareed as speaker, one more than the 51 required. Six of them had been elected on the NGM’s and the PUK’s lists with three each.

Commentators differed over how deep the rupture runs.

  • Iraqi Kurdish journalist Kamal Chomani on Nov. 5 wrote that the choice was now “either equal partnership, or a return to two administrations.” The journalist added that the KRG “will never be a united institution as long as these two parties hold their armed militias.”

  • Victoria Taylor, director of the Atlantic Council’s Iraq Initiative and a former senior US State Department official, argued hours later that earlier American administrations would have stepped in to “knock heads if required.”

  • Iraqi Kurdish political commentator Islam Zebari predicted the divisions would be short-lived, anticipating regional and international pressure to bring the two parties back to the table.

The context/analysis: This is not the first time the KDP has filled the Kurdistan Parliament’s speakership while the PUK stayed away, nor Fareed’s first turn in the chair.

  • In Feb. 2019, the KDP elected her speaker as a placeholder during a PUK boycott. Five months later, PUK lawmaker Rewaz Fayaq succeeded her under a government formation agreement between the two parties.

  • This time, the speaker insisted on Nov. 4, the day of her election, that the new leadership is permanent, but the deeper dispute is over control of the KRG, not the speakership.

The KDP, which won 39 of 100 seats to the PUK’s 23 in the Oct. 2024 Kurdistan Parliament elections, appears intent on turning its electoral advantage into greater executive control, while its rival demands a more equal partnership.

  • The PUK has pressed for a 50-50 split of power, a formula KDP official Kamran Gharib rejected in comments to Baghdad-based Shafaq News in June as having been “overtaken by current political and electoral developments.”

  • PUK member Sardar Ahmed said on Oct. 19 that his party wanted a say in how Iraqi Kurdistan is run, not just a share of posts. Chief among its demands has been the KRG’s interior ministry, which the KDP has reportedly declined to give up.

Unable to secure parity through negotiations, the PUK turned to the opposition in an apparent bid for leverage.

  • The Sulaimaniyah-based party’s July 2 alliance with the 15-seat NGM produced a 38-seat bloc, one short of the KDP’s 39. By late October, Barzani’s camp had refused to negotiate with the pair jointly, insisting on separate talks.

  • NGM leader Shaswar Abdulwahid said on Sept. 19 that the pact was about securing a budget law, adding, “We have not spoken in any way about forming the government, or whether we will take part in it.”

Talabani’s threat revives a division that formal unification never fully erased. Although the two parties merged their administrations in 2006, the KDP retains its strongest institutional and security footholds in Duhok and Erbil, and the PUK in Sulaimaniyah.

  • Their Peshmerga military units were unified under the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs only in September.


The future: Talabani’s threat to create a parallel government hinges on whether the KDP names a president or cabinet for the Kurdistan region without the PUK. Senior KDP official Dijwar Faiq signaled on Nov. 7 that the parliament would meet again on Nov. 9 to elect its legal committee and open nominations for the post of president, and how the PUK and NGM respond will be an early sign of their intentions.

  • PUK officials were instructed not to return to their posts from Nov. 8, but whether ministers and KRG Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani, the party leader’s brother, formally resign—and if the NGM backs a rival administration—will show how far the rupture goes.

  • Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court is expected on Dec. 14 to rule on a lawsuit seeking caretaker status for the outgoing KRG cabinet. A ruling against the cabinet could hasten efforts to replace the regional administration, and with them the KDP-only appointments that the PUK leader says would trigger his own.

A formal split would be felt first in the daily business of government rather than on the map.

  • Rival claims over security, public finances and appointments may prove a more immediate risk than any bid to form a separate federal region of Iraq, a step the PUK leader has stopped short of announcing. However, senior party official Mahmoud Khoshnaw raised the prospect on Nov. 7 of administrative independence for Sulaimaniyah.