Kurdish elections arrive — finally, and with challenges

Posters of candidates line the median of Salim Street in downtown Sulaymaniyah, some smiling but most looking dignified and serious. Above them, colorful strings of bunting with party logos drape from the light poles. In the nightlife district of Saholaka, groups of friends drink tea and eat sunflower seeds late into the evening, many of them discussing the ongoing election campaign. Every few minutes, a car drives by honking its horn and waving a party flag.

Iraq’s Kurdistan Region will hold elections for its devolved parliament for the first time since 2018, on Oct. 20. The polls are more than two years late and come at a time of major economic and political challenges for the semi-autonomous zone.

Those voters sitting in Saholaka and across the Kurdistan Region are worried whether they will get paid at their public sector jobs or whether they will have jobs at all. They are angry about rampant corruption and exhausted by constant power cuts and bad roads. They are suspicious about the intentions of Baghdad, Tehran, and Ankara and afraid that the war in Gaza and Lebanon will spread. All their politicians seem to do is attack each other, with the campaign only deepening that acrimony. Nevertheless, they feel that the election’s outcome will have a major effect on the Kurdistan Region’s future.

With just days left before the vote, there are several important dynamics to watch. First, what is the current relationship between the two ruling parties: the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)? Second, what is the state of the political opposition? Third, what are the expected results?

Lead up

The election was originally scheduled for Oct. 1, 2022, when the four-year mandate of the Kurdistan Parliament expired, but was repeatedly delayed amid disagreements between the KDP and the PUK. Despite urging from Washington and other foreign governments, the two failed to negotiate a compromise on the 11 parliamentary seats reserved for ethnic and religious minorities. They were held by KDP allies, and the PUK argued that this gave its rival an unfair advantage.

The parties’ inability to find an agreement about the minority seats meant that the electoral process was taken out of Kurdish hands. The federal government took charge in early 2024, after a ruling from the Federal Supreme Court, and eventually imposed a solution regarding the minority seats. There will now be three seats for Christians and two for Turkmens distributed across Duhok, Erbil, and Sulaymaniyah.

This inauspicious buildup highlights the extreme tensions that have developed between the KDP and the PUK over the course of the current Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) cabinet. Both parties have brought in a new generation of leadership since the last elections. Masoud Barzani remains the preeminent figure within the KDP, but he has passed day-to-day responsibility to his eldest son, Masrour, who has served as KRG prime minister since 2019. Nechirvan Barzani has been largely sidelined by his cousin’s rise, effectively kicked upstairs into a ceremonial position and his allies muscled out of key party positions.

Masrour Barzani portrays himself as a technocratic visionary, but this belies relatively few tangible achievements and the severe economic difficulties that have faced his administration. His authoritarian approach to governance and thin-skinned manner have alienated the rest of the Kurdistan Region’s political scene, which (privately) worries the region’s partners. His political future and whether he will get another term as prime minister is a major focus of the campaign.

The PUK has undergone a similar transition, if in much more chaotic fashion. Bafel Talabani, the eldest son of late party leader Jalal Talabani, has risen from relative insignificance to lead the party. In doing so, he ousted his cousin Lahur Sheikh Jangi. The latter is now running separately in the election. Talabani is rough, raw, and untested in terms of actually having to govern. However, some observers think that voters will appreciate his efforts to impose greater hierarchy and discipline within the party.

KDP vs PUK

The contrast between Barzani and Talabani is stark. It is clear that there is no love lost between the two men. More importantly, their ambitions are incompatible. Once, there was relative balance between the KDP and the PUK; but over the past 15 years, the former has become more powerful and the latter has struggled in the face of internal divisions and competition from opposition groups.

Barzani hopes to solidify this ascendency and take full charge of the governing structures of the Kurdistan Region. Talabani wants to check this and return the PUK to what the party sees as its rightful place. Neither man seems willing to compromise, and the difficult working relationship between their parties has become increasingly dysfunctional under their watch.

The campaign has reflected this extreme tension between the KDP and the PUK. In the first few weeks, it was Talabani who went on the offensive against the KDP. In a series of rallies, he took direct aim at Barzani and the ninth cabinet’s record with his party using the campaign slogan: “We will end it.” His fiery, populist rhetoric has made an impact on voters and excited the party’s base but enraged the KDP. During a weekly cabinet meeting on the first day of campaigning, Barzani and KRG Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani got into a verbal argument over the slogan in front of the gathered ministers.

For the first half of the three-week campaign, Barzani used his position as prime minister to send a message of stability and progress. He visited a farm, opened a factory, and announced money for a much-needed road. Even if you do not like him, he argued, the KDP is focused on real issues in the face of challenging times.

But the party undermined its own strategy on Oct. 8 when the KDP’s High Electoral Committee released a fake audio clip, likely generated by artificial intelligence (AI), purporting to be a conversation between Bafel and Qubad discussing plans to commit electoral fraud in concert with Iran. The blatant and clumsy effort to spread disinformation backfired in spectacular fashion. It damaged Barzani’s credibility — only the most extreme KDP partisans believe that it is authentic — and gave Talabani a platform to ridicule his rival, an opportunity that he is clearly relishing.

The opposition plays second fiddle

The tense interplay between the KDP and the PUK has dominated the campaign so far, leaving the political opposition as somewhat of an afterthought. It is made up of four secular parties — the New Generation Movement, Gorran, the Popular Front, and the National Stance Movement — and the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) and the Kurdistan Justice Group (KJG), both of which are Islamist groups. The opposition has little chance of displacing the ruling duopoly but could prove kingmakers if the election yields an inconclusive result.

Their strategy is to appeal to voters who are disillusioned with the ruling parties and the many everyday problems that face ordinary people. An ad running on New Generation’s TV channel NRT depicts a series of despondent voters — a farmer unable to sell his produce, a woman blowing a tire on a pot-holed road, a young man unable to pay his part of the bill at a café while out with friends — who brighten up as a gigantic ballot box with the party’s logo heaves into view. This is a major voting bloc, but their power is diluted across the numerous options. Moreover, it is unclear what the opposition leaders would realistically do to address these problems.

Talabani and the PUK seem to have stolen their populist thunder. Despite being in power in the KRG and in Sulaymaniyah governorate for three decades, the PUK is essentially running an opposition campaign. Voters are well aware that the PUK is one of the sources of their immiseration but may be willing to give the party and its new leadership a chance to stick it to the KDP. Talabani’s behavior on the campaign trail is something fresh and different in Kurdish politics, and could attract opposition voters who are unsatisfied with New Generation or the other parties. The alternative is to lend their support to a faction that will end up with just a handful of seats and little influence on its own.

If things go well, the opposition collectively could win close to a third of the seats in the next Kurdistan Parliament. This will not give any individual party much influence, particularly if the New Generation Movement gets the most opposition seats, since it is allergic to any accusation that it is working with the ruling parties. However, a good showing will force the winning parties to include at least some of them in the formation of a government and the drafting of new policies.

Many potential voters plan to sit out the election, fed up with both the ruling parties and the opposition. They could be the most influential of all. Low turnout introduces high degrees of uncertainty into any prediction of seat totals.

The difficulty of predicting results

It is nearly impossible to predict with any certainty how the elections will go. Scientific political polling is virtually non-existent in the Kurdistan Region. Expected seat totals vary widely depending on who you ask. However, looking at the structural factors is a good way of avoiding the most outrageous and partisan assessments.

The KDP was the largest party in the 2018 election, with 45 seats, and is positioned to win the most this time as well. The 59 seats in its heartland of Duhok and Erbil governorates give it an advantage over other parties. Whereas the KDP will face limited competition there, the PUK must compete with the various opposition parties for the 38 seats in Sulaymaniyah. As a result, the KDP’s floor is probably higher than the PUK’s ceiling.

What is certain, however, is that the government formation process will be extremely difficult whatever the result. The deep acrimony between the two ruling parties will be hard to resolve. Each appears more concerned with pursuing its self-interest rather than any common program. While that may prove extremely damaging for the Kurdistan Region as an entity, the real losers will be ordinary people. Basic governance will suffer in a divided, dysfunctional Kurdistan Region, and the consequences will be felt most by the population, not the politicians.

Winthrop Rodgers is a journalist and researcher who focuses on politics, human rights, and political economy. His past work has appeared in Foreign Policy, the Index on Censorship, Al-Monitor, and Rest of World.

Photo by Winthrop Rogers