The Pathway of the Opposition in the Kurdistan Region: Gorran as a Model

Abstract

In the Kurdistan region, prior to the establishment of Kurdish de-facto autonomy in 1991, Kurdish political parties’ duties mainly included armed insurrection against the Iraqi government to procure rights for Kurds. After the 1991 uprising against the Baathist state, the Kurdish people hoped for a new start for the region which would bring about freedom, development, and participation in a new democratic process. However, shortly after the founding of the first Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), civil war broke out in Iraqi Kurdistan between the PUK and KDP. After hostilities ended in 1994, the two parties decided to divide power among them both equally without the need for elections. As they were heavily armed and had established partimonial networks with smaller, supporting parties, there was no possibility of challenging the new system in place. This situation lasted until 2008-2009 with the emergence of Gorran, a newly established political party which aimed to be the region’s first true democratic opposition. Gorran participated in the third KRG parliament between 2009-2013. In coalition with the Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG) and Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU) parties, they formed the first official parliamentary opposition bloc. For the four years that the coalition lasted, there was a noticable change in quality of debates and legislative work in Parliament. Despite the good start to the their existence, in the fourth parliament in 2013, the opposition decided to join the government and made several strategic and tactical mistakes. The stated goal of joining the grand coalition government was to hold the government accountable internally. This, however, did not materialise and slowly opposition as a political entity became increasingly weak. This study attempts to study all the causes of this failure, In particular the reasons that led to the weakening of Gorran, as the previously main opposition power, wich was not only became weaker, but also lost their effectiveness as a political movement.