Sulaymaniyah drone strike raises KDP-PUK tension in Iraqi Kurdistan
The already troubled relationship between the main parties in Iraq’s Kurdistan region is deteriorating in the wake of an apparent Turkish drone strike near Sulaymaniyah airport.
The drone hit near a convoy carrying Syrian Democratic Forces commander Mazloum Abdi and US military officials on April 7. There were no casualties.
It is another example of the influence the actions of external forces have on the politics of the region and how local parties try to use events for their own purposes.
In the hours after the attack, Kurdistan Regional Government spokesman Jotiar Adil released an incendiary statement against the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which controls Sulaymaniyah, calling it an “authoritarian party”. The party’s behaviour encouraged the strike, Mr Adil said.
Turkey shut its airspace to flights to and from Sulaymaniyah in the days before the attack and accused the PUK of being under the control of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
The PKK has fought a decades-long conflict against Ankara for Kurdish autonomy in south-eastern Turkey.
While nominally a government spokesman, Mr Adil is a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the PUK’s main domestic rival. At the moment, they sit in government together, but differences over internal revenue sharing, electoral reforms and security affairs have undermined their working relationship.
Speaker of the Kurdistan Parliament Rewaz Fayaq, a member of the PUK, denounced Mr Adil’s statement. There was “no justification for the unlawful attack … just as there was none for any earlier attacks on Erbil airport”, she said, referring to repeated Iranian strikes on the region’s capital.
“The Kurdistan region’s cities must be treated equally by the government,” Ms Fayaq said. “Shame on those who carried out the attack and anyone who justifies it.”
Zmkan Ali Saleem, a professor of politics at the University of Sulaymaniyah, told The National that the foreign ties of the Kurdish parties are mainly a function of the geopolitical ambitions and concerns of external actors.
“The Kurdish parties use external relationships for domestic political reasons, but that comes second,” he said. “The relationship is quite asymmetric.”
That has not stopped the KDP and the PUK from using their ties with foreign countries and non-state actors as fodder for their own rivalry, as highlighted by the anger over Mr Adil’s comments.
The KDP has a close relationship with Turkey, which maintains a network of military bases in the north-western parts of the Kurdistan region and Nineveh governorate. Ankara justifies this by saying it is necessary to fight against the PKK. The KDP has clashed with the PKK several times.
Most of the Kurdistan region’s oil fields are in KDPcontrolled areas, with crude exported to the Turkish port of Ceyhan by pipeline.
Before an arbitration ruling by the International Chamber of Commerce last month shut down operations, about 370,000 barrels per day were exported through Turkey.
The PUK, in contrast, controls the region’s gas fields. KDP officials including the region’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani also want to export gas through Turkey.
PUK leader Bafel Talabani opposes the plans, saying Sulaymaniyah has not been getting a fair share of oil revenue and that the PUK wants to have a closer relationship with Baghdad.
In general, the PUK has strong ties with Iran and the parties that make up Baghdad’s ruling Co-ordination Framework coalition. Militias associated with some of these parties have repeatedly attacked a Turkish base in Nineveh.
Mr Talabani has also recently made a point of drawing a contrast with the KDP by emphasising his party’s links with Syrian Kurdish groups, which Turkey views as proxies of the PKK. After the Sulaymaniyah airport attack, Mr Abdi said Ankara was dissatisfied with strengthened relations between the SDF and the PUK.
As the KDP and the PUK jockey for position internally and external forces use the region to advance their interests, ordinary people are caught in the middle.
Cross-border attacks by the Turkish military killed between 98 and 123 civilians between 2015 and 2021 in the region, a report by Community Peacemaker Teams said. The Airwars monitoring group said at least 15 civilians have been killed in Iranian strikes.
On July 20 last year, Turkish shelling killed eight tourists at a resort near Parakhe village in Duhok governorate. More than 20 were wounded.
Yousif Saadi, a relative of two of those killed in the attack, told The National that cross-border attacks have disrupted the local economy by preventing people from farming and grazing sheep.
“Many people from the villages are moving to the cities,” he said.
Other states also have significant interests in the region, including the US, the UK and European countries, who offer political legitimacy and security assistance to the KDP and the PUK. Russia’s state-owned energy companies also have large investments in Kurdish oil and gas.
Foreign influences are controversial, even if they provide some benefits.
“As a citizen, I see all of it as negative,” Mr Saleem said.
“I would like to see an institutionalised relationship where it’s not about these parties, their concerns, their domestic politics.
“Their survival should be routed through established institutions that work and operate on behalf of the interest of the Kurds.”