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Wladimir van Wilgenburg
the KDP or the PUK. While the Gorran minister wants to end partisan divisions and
turn the Kurdistan Peshmerga forces into a non-partisan army, the PUK and the KDP
continue to maintain control of most Kurdish security forces, and the battle against IS
is hampered by these parties conflicting policies.
Despite these internal weaknesses, the Peshmerga forcesmanaged to regainmost territories
with the support of US airstrikes. In fact, the Kurds are now seen as the most effective ground
force. “The Peshmergas show the will to fight and the capability to fight,” US Secretary of
Defence Ashton Carter said in June 2015 (Basnews, June 2015). “The Kurdish forces are
what we aspire to with respect to the Iraqi security forces in general,” he added.
The presidential crisis
However, a new crisis could threaten Kurdish stability and the unity between the
Kurdish parties in their fight against Islamic State. Amidst the war against IS, a new crisis
erupted in the Iraqi Kurdistan region over the future of the presidency of Masoud Barzani,
who is also the leader of the KDP. This could destabilize the region. Barzani’s presidential
term is supposed to end on August 20 2015 the law limits the presidency to two terms
(Barwari, August 11 2015). The PUK and Gorran want to turn the presidential system into
a parliamentary system and to limit the president’s power. But the supporters of the KDP
argue that Barzani should stay amidst the crisis with Islamic State, and could lead the
Kurds to independence. In mid August, the president released a statement that the KDP
would call for early elections if a consensus was not reached between the political parties
(Hawler Times, August 11 2015). If a consensus is not reached, this could destabilize
the political system and break up the majority government, which was formed by all the
political parties.
The peace process in Turkey
While the fight against Islamic State continued in Iraq and Syria, in Turkey the
Kurds waged a more political struggle.
In Turkey, the main Kurdish party is the
People’s
Democratic Party (HDP), which is very close to PKK rebels. The HDP benefited from the
relative peace in the country as a result of a ceasefire declared by the PKK in March 2013
(BBC, July 27 2015) as a result of peace talks between the ruling AKP-party and the PKK.
The HDP participated in the elections on June 7, 2015, and passed the 10 per
cent threshold; thereby denying the Justice and Development Party (AKP) a majority
government. For the first time since 2002, the AKP did not obtain 276 seats to form a
majority government on its own (IRIN, July 2015). The AKP was counting on the HDP not
to pass the electoral threshold, which would have meant that all its votes would go to the
AKP. In this scenario, the AKP would have had a super-majority government to alter the
constitution and implement a presidential system through a referendum (Hurriyet June,
2015). Instead, the HDP passed the threshold by giving the Turks a difficult choice: vote for
a pro-Kurdish party and deny AKP a majority government, or vote for other parties and give
the AKP the chance to form a majority government. As a result, the AKP is forced to either
form a coalition government with different parties, or call for early elections.