Northern Iraq unrest hinges on presidency’s fate: expert

The recent unrest in northern Iraq’s Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah is a result of the ongoing presidency crisis, experts say.

On Thursday, five people lost their lives and tens of others were wounded in violence in the city.

According to Salih Omar, a political science lecturer at Erbil-based Salahattin University, the tension between Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and Goran (Movement for Change) was mainly due to the presidency issue.

“Goran wanted to change the ruling system and presidency law in Kurdistan,” Omar told Anadolu Agency Monday. “When Goran understood it could not resolve the presidency issue in the parliament, it tried to get a result by mobilizing [people in the] streets,” he claimed.

The current president of Iraq’s Kurdish regional government, Massoud Barzani, warned in September that early elections would be held in the region if political parties failed to resolve the ongoing crisis over the presidency.

“Ongoing differences between political parties with regard to the presidential crisis are part of the democratic process,” Barzani said in his September statement.

Barzani was elected president in 2005 and again in 2009. When his term expired in 2013, the regional parliament extended his mandate until August 20, 2015, and on August 17, his term was extended again for two more years.

The 111-seat Kurdish parliament is currently shared between Barzani’s KDP (38 seats), Gorran (24 seats), the PUK (18 seats), Yekgirt (10 seats) and Komela Islam (six seats). The assembly’s remaining 15 seats are held by various other small parties.

According to Anadolu Agency sources in Iraq, although the protests started as a result of delay in salaries to civil servants, most protesters on Thursday were young people who did not work for the government. The protesters also reportedly attacked KDP offices in the region.

Aydin Maruf, a parliamentarian representing Iraqi Turkmen Front, also said Monday that the protesters were masked youth rather than civil servants.

“The protesters aim was not to meet the salary demand because they were not civil servants. This is a political movement,” Maruf said.

Claiming that the main target of the ongoing protest was Barzani, Maruf said: “These are violent acts…it reminds us of the civil war between 1992 and 1998.”

According to another Iraqi Turkmen parliamentarian, Muhammad Ilhanli, who spoke with Anadolu Agency on Monday, external powers were behind the protests.

“Frankly, Iran and other powers, who do not want stability in the region and are uncomfortable with the region’s alliance with Turkey, have a hand in this matter,” Ilhanli said.

Omar also said that the KDP announced Sunday that Goran would not stay in the government anymore. There are currently five Goran ministers in the regional government’s Cabinet.

Meanwhile, tensions between the regional government and the central government in Baghdad remains high over oil sales and shares from the federal budget.

Baghdad said last week that Erbil might not obtain its share from the country's 2016 federal budget if it continued to export oil independently.

“For the KRG to get its share from Iraq's federal budget, it should deliver revenues from its independent oil sales to Baghdad,” Zahir al-Ibadi, a member of the Iraqi Parliamentary Oil and Gas Commission, told Anadolu Agency.

According to the deal signed between the two sides on Dec. 2, 2014, the regional government is entitled to receive a 17 percent share, or around $17 billion every year from the country's budget in return for selling its crude oil under the supervision of Baghdad’s oil marketing company SOMO.

According to the Dec. 2 deal, the regional government can export 300,000 barrels of oil per day from Kirkuk, and 250,000 barrels of oil per day from northern Iraq, under the supervision of SOMO.

However, Erbil suspended the deal after claiming that Baghdad did not send its share from the federal budget, and began exporting its crude oil independently from July onwards.