Kurdistan Regional Parliament elections have been set for 20 October, under decree of President Nechirvan Barzani, after preparations for 10 June polls were suspended.
Over two years of delays have marred the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for 2022, over critical disputes between Erbil’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the regional government’s dominant party, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), a rival party based in Sulaymaniyah (Silêmanî).
Disagreements on electoral law, taxation, and the distribution of oil revenue have prolonged the political vacuum, in a region fraught with tension between disparate Kurdish factions.
Last month, five seats in the Kurdistan Parliament were reallocated for minority groups, following a KDP election boycott in the wake of Iraqi Federal Court rulings that challenged the Kurdistan Region’s legislative and financial framework.
“The PUK believes that holding the Kurdistan Region’s parliamentary elections is the best way to further deepen democracy and move past the current complicated situation domestically and in the region in general,” Saadi Pira, the party spokesman, said in a previous address. He emphasised the importance of reactivating the parliament for fulfilling its legislative duties and addressing the multifaceted issues facing the people of Kurdistan.
Simultaneously, Turkey is amassing troops at the southern border of the region, in preparation for a full-scale invasion, ostensibly backed by the KDP. The PUK have decried the KDP’s backing for Turkish operations as ‘anti-Kurd’ and further eroding Kurdish unity and stability in the contested region.
Moreover, commentators have surmised that Turkey may have strategically timed the military offensive in order to further delay the elections, capitalising on regional rivalries to strengthen the leverage of the Turkish government in its allegiance with the KDP against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) armed presence in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Turkey’s deal with the KDP and the Iraqi Federal Government, which secured a green light for Turkish occupation of large swathes of Iraqi Kurdistan, is believed by many analysts to be in return for agreements on infrastructural projects, revenues from a key oil pipeline running through the KRI, establishing a ‘New Silk Road’ through Iraq, and control over water resources.
