The Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, currently are renegotiating a 2005 power-sharing agreement. Signed following the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein, the agreement was essential in uniting Iraq's three Kurdish provinces under a single Kurdish administration. Prior to the agreement, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan administered the southeastern province of Sulaimaniyah while the Kurdistan Democratic Party administered the northwestern provinces of Arbil and Dahuk; party members kept to their respective domains.

Details surrounding the negotiations are unclear, but the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan apparently wants to revisit the 2005 agreement, which gave the two parties equal shares of power in the regional government. Provincial elections in 2009 upset the balance of power by strengthening the Goran party, a secular offshoot of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, as well as Islamist parties such as the Islamic Union of Kurdistan and the Kurdistan Islamic Group.

Over the past six months, Arbil residents have reported that many government institutions initially based in Sulaimaniyah have been relocated to Arbil as the Barzani clan has expanded its control at the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's expense. Questions surrounding the health and succession of Talabani have also eroded the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's power. Unsurprisingly, the Kurdistan Democratic Party wants to retain its advantage while the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan tries to shore up its position.

The Goran party's anti-corruption platform carries a lot of weight among Kurds who are disenchanted with corruption in the two leading parties. The Goran party's approval has increased, particularly within the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's sphere of influence. Many Goran members are former Patriotic Union of Kurdistan officials. In fact, Goran party leader Nawshirwan Mustafa served as a Peshmerga commander and then as the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's secretary-general from 1976-2006 before founding the Goran party in 2009. For many Kurdish youths and for disaffected members of the two leading parties, the Goran offers a fresher alternative.

The rise of the Goran party exposed the liability of a joint political ticket between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan: Both parties are seen as stale and corrupt. While each party is trying to distance itself from the other, both parties are independently reaching out to the Goran party to try to form an alliance. The parties view such a potential cooperation as a way to improve their political image and ultimately undercut their long-time rival. With Kurdish politics in such flux, neither party cares to test the voters' will in fresh elections. In June, provincial elections were delayed for the fourth time — this time indefinitely.

The External Factor

Internal fractures are endemic to Kurdish tribal politics. A mountainous territory has long given the Kurds refuge from surrounding enemies, but it also has cemented divisions in power and tradition between the more conservative, Kurmanji-speaking peoples of the northwest, where the Kurdistan Democratic Party has its power base, and the more left-leaning, secular Sorani-speaking peoples of the southwest, which is controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

The natural divisions within the Kurdish landscape have allowed regional powers such as Turkey, Iran and Syria to prevent their substantial Kurdish populations from establishing a unified state that could threaten these states' own territorial integrity. Each of these states has used Kurdish divisions, as well as mutual concerns over the Kurds' aspirations for statehood, to keep Kurds divided.

Particularly detrimental to the Kurds is when more powerful neighbors exploit these fissures and play Kurdish factions off one another in the broader regional competition. This happened during the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), when the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, backed respectively by Iran and Iraq, turned to their regional adversaries for help in fighting against their Kurdish rivals. A tenuous truce reached by the two parties in 1986 fell apart in 1994 — just two years after the original formation of the Kurdistan Regional Government — when a full-scale civil war broke out between them. In the conflict, the Kurdistan Democratic Party accused the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan of receiving support from Iran and Syria. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan meanwhile accused their rival of receiving support first from Iran, and then from Turkey.

After the United States imposed a no-fly zone in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1992, Iran and Syria worried that Washington would help foster an independent Kurdish state in order to encourage independence movements. Tehran and Damascus encouraged the Kurdistan Workers' Party — which, known by its Kurdish acronym PKK, is Turkey's largest and most active Kurdish militant group and has bases in northern Iraq — to attack the Kurdistan Democratic Party in hopes of derailing U.S. attempts at establishing a truce between the two leading parties. Meanwhile, Turkey grew alarmed at the prospect of a security vacuum in northern Iraq that could further empower the PKK. 

The fall of Saddam Hussein marked the next turning point for Iraqi Kurds. The Kurds again united, under the aegis of the Kurdistan Regional Government, in an attempt to capitalize on the fall of their biggest and most proximate foe. Energy reserves were used to lay the economic foundation for the Kurdistan Regional Government. The alliance between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan has endured for nearly a decade, but the strategic pact is again straining under the regional balance of power.

Regional Power Struggle

Home to the world's largest Kurdish population, Turkey has long struggled to develop a policy to manage its Kurdish constituency and to neutralize Kurdish militant groups like the PKK. In recent years, Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party has prioritized political and economic engagement with the Kurds over military crackdowns. The party believed that a strategic partnership with Iraq's Kurdish leadership was essential to undercutting the PKK at home (the PKK has a crucial support base in Iraq's Qandil Mountains).

Economic leverage was important to developing this strategic partnership. Turkey is the Kurdistan Regional Government's main export corridor. As tensions grew between Arbil and Baghdad over the development of northern oil reserves and the allocation of oil revenues, Ankara offered to guarantee Iraqi Kurdistan's economic security in exchange for Arbil's cooperation in limiting PKK activities and in curtailing Kurdish ambitions for an independent state. The Justice and Development Party focused on the Barzani clan as it made these arrangements.

Turkey has a strategic interest in increasing its energy imports from northern Iraq, but empowering the Kurdistan Regional Government economically at the expense of Baghdad's authority is risky for Ankara. Turkey will continue to foster competition in Iraqi Kurdistan, but Ankara also needs its Kurdish partner to have real authority and the ability to keep its end of the bargain. With the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan's support base already eroding, the Barzani clan was the natural choice. Barzani's nationalist rhetoric on Kurdish statehood distressed Turkey a decade ago, but he is now Turkey's favored Kurdish politician. However, Turkey's close dealings with Barzani — and the economic benefits that accompany this partnership — have also isolated the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and exacerbated the divide between the two leading parties in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Turkey is not the only regional power taking a special interest in the Kurds right now. The conflict in Syria has exposed an underlying tension between Turkey and Iran. Indeed, Turkey has decided to support a Sunni rebel insurgency specifically to curb Iranian power in the Levant and to extend Turkish influence deeper into its periphery through like-minded Sunni governments.

Hoping to push Turkey to back off this strategy and to respect the Iranian sphere of influence, Tehran and Damascus are trying to pit the Kurds against Ankara. Turkey is on alert for Iranian- and Syrian-backed PKK attacks. In fact, Ankara recently carried out a major military offensive in the mostly Kurdish southeast. The operation appeared to be a pre-emptive strike against the militant group. A rise in Kurdish militant activity in Turkey's Hatay province has fed Turkish suspicions that Iran and Syria are aiding the PKK and its sympathizers in Syria.

Turkey is also highly concerned about the power vacuum developing in Syria's Kurdish northeast. Already stretched thin battling rebel forces throughout the country, the Syrian military has deliberately pulled back from Syria's Kurdish-populated northern border region with Turkey. The Syrian regime's strategy is to create a situation that will inhibit Turkish support for the Syrian rebellion. Turkey has been wary of intervening militarily in Syrian territory to contain the flow of refugees, but Ankara now faces an increasingly lawless situation in its Kurdish borderland. This environment could fuel Syrian Kurdish aspirations for autonomy, since the Kurds are unencumbered by a consolidated Arab regime in Damascus. More important for Ankara, however, is that it could allow the PKK to expand into Syria and foster militant factions to threaten Turkey.

Situated on the steppes of the Jazirah plateau, Syria's Kurdish northeast does not offer the same resources or mountainous refuge as Iraqi Kurdistan. This makes the Syrian Kurdish situation more manageable so long as Turkey can count on the support of the Barzani clan. As several editorials in the Turkish media point out, Turkey's growing reliance on Barzani has limits, but it is one of the few decent tools Ankara has to shape the Kurdish landscape in its favor.

The Syrian Kurdish landscape is already breaking apart under regional pressures. On one side, Syria and Iran are backing the PKK-linked Democratic Union Party and are trying to veer the Syrian Kurdish movement toward militancy. On the other side, Turkey and the Barzani clan are supporting the Kurdish National Council and are relying on this faction to remove PKK sympathizers from Syria. This match-up has in turn applied PKK pressure on the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The PKK already showed in the 1994 Iraqi Kurdish civil war that it will work to undermine the unity between Iraqi Kurdistan's two leading parties, especially when one faction has a working relationship with its prime adversary, Turkey.

Meanwhile, Iran can be expected to court the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan to try to undermine the relationship that Ankara has developed through Barzani. Iran has also been trying to establish a close working relationship with the up-and-coming Goran movement to expand its options in the Kurdish political scene.

With the Syrian regime waning, Iran on the defensive and Turkey on the regional ascent, the Kurdistan Regional Government will be pulled in multiple directions as its regional neighbors compete. Regional pressures are intensifying as a power imbalance within the Kurdistan Regional Government threatens to undermine the Iraqi Kurdish alliance. A little less than a decade ago, many things were going right for Iraqi Kurdistan: Saddam Hussein had fallen, foreign oil companies were moving in to develop northern energy assets and the United States had committed a large military presence in the area — a move many Kurds interpreted as a security guarantee against hostile neighbors. At that time, there was ample reason for the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan to put aside their differences and band together to seize the historic opportunity to consolidate Iraqi Kurdish autonomy.

Currently, Turkey holds the key to Iraqi Kurdistan's energy independence. Meanwhile, U.S. military forces have withdrawn from Iraq, regional competition is growing between Iran and Turkey and the United States is developing a strategic partnership with Turkey to manage the region — a partnership that largely eliminates any incentive for Washington to support the Kurds against Ankara's interests. In these tougher times, the cohesion of the Kurdistan Regional Government will be tested.