Democratic Party of Kurdistan (Iraq)

Political party advocating the autonomy of the Iraqi Kurds.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) was founded on 16 August 1946 at the suggestion of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, who was then in the Kurdish republic of Mahabad. Its creation sanctioned the split of the national movement of the Kurds into different, sometimes opposing, Iranian and Iraqi organizations.

In the absence of Barzani, who went into exile in the Soviet Union, KDP became a progressive party, led by Kurdish intellectuals quite close to the Iraqi Communist Party. After he returned in 1958, the party was shaken by a severe crisis, opposing Barzani's acceptance to the political bureau, along with Ibrahim Ahmad and his son-in-law Jalal Talabani. KDP never fully recovered from these events of 1964 and became a mere instrument of Barzani.

After the collapse of the Kurdish movement in 1975 and discredited by Barzani's decision to stop the resistance, KDP lost the monopoly it had enjoyed for thirty years. Today, the KDP led by Masʿud al-Barzani must share leadership of the movement in Iraq with its rival, Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and several smaller organizations.

— CHRIS KUTSCHERA