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Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Patriotic Union Of Kurdistan Yekîtiya Nîştimaniya Kurdistan الاتحاد الوطني الكردستان |
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|---|---|
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| Leader | Jalal Talabani |
| Founded | June 1, 1975 |
| Headquarters | Sulaymaniyah |
| Official ideology/ political position |
Kurdish nationalism, Social Democracy
(party charter: Democratic Socialism) |
| International affiliation | Socialist International |
| Official color(s) | Green |
| Website | www.puk.org |
The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) (est. 1975) (Kurdish: Yakêtî Nîştimanî Kurdistan) is a Kurdish political party in Iraqi Kurdistan.
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The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan claims to be working for self-determination, human rights, democracy and peace for the Kurdish people of Iraq.
The Secretary General is Jalal Talabani, the current president of Iraq. Nawshirwan Mustafa is the deputy Secretary General of the party. The PUK's policy and decision making body also lies within the Politburo.
The PUK was a coalition of five separate political entities that united under the leadership of Jalal Talabani also known to Kurds as Mam ("Uncle") Jalal and Nawshirwan Mustafa; the leading factions were Komala Ranjdarani Kurdistan ("The League") and Shorish Geran ("revolution spreaders").
The PUK received grassroots support from the urban intellectual classes of Iraqi Kurdistan upon its establishment, this was partly due to 13 of its 15 founding members being PhD holders and academics. Originally, the party was a leftist political movement which has progressively moved towards the centre ground and has now become a social democratic party and an associate member of Socialist International.
In the early 1980s the PUK evolved and broadened its appeal to all sections of Kurdish society especially the rural classes. The regional Kurdish assembly elections showed that the PUK's support lies predominantly in the southern area of Iraqi Kurdistan. Since the first Persian Gulf War, the PUK has jointly administered northern Iraqi Kurdistan with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). However, cooperation with the KDP in administering the area was not always smooth, and occasionally violence flared up between KDP and PUK militias. Effectively the areas was divided into KDP-controlled territory and PUK-controlled territory (centered around Suleymaniya).
The PUK joined with the KDP and smaller parties to form the Democratic Patriotic Alliance of Kurdistan as an umbrella group contesting the Iraqi National Assembly election, 2005. This unified Kurdish list gained 25.6% of the vote on the first post-Saddam Iraqi elections on 31 January 2005. Jalal Talabani is now the president of the republic of Iraq.
This was followed by the decision in January 2006, to form an alliance with the KDP and run Iraqi Kurdistan under a unified administration. [1]
The PUK has been losing its popularity within the Kurdish classes, due to internal corruption, and "using its power to control the Kurdistan Regional Government in a dictatorial way" as stated by most local media sources.[citation needed] Also it has been known to use government funds to attract new members, and to split sources of government income (mainly oil money) between its high members, which has led to many scandalous issues, although 'in the last one or two years the PUK has been taking over government lands and property, masquerading the process as public welfare projects, and here people call it "theft in broad daylight" ', as said a local university academic.[citation needed]