Patriotic Union of Kurdistan

Türkiye has closed its airspace for the aircraft, which land/take-off at Iraq's Sulaymaniyah International Airport, as of April 3 upon the intensification of PKK activities in the region, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Tanju Bilgiç said.

The Sulaymaniyah-based Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) vowed on May 29 to lodge a legal appeal against a parliamentary decision to cancel all ballots cast overseas in Iraq's May 12 parliamentary election.

Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the National Movement Party (MHP), recently criticized the Kurdish Regional Government's (KRG) plan to hold an independence referendum and said "this should be considered 'casus belli' [cause for war]."

Some might have realized that Bahçeli's statements in the recent past on foreign policy issues have turned out to be Turkey's official foreign policy.

Ankara has asked the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) to close its office in Ankara and demand that its personnel leave Turkey, Bahruz Galali, the party's representative to Ankara told the Hürriyet Daily News on Aug. 24 after he and his family arrived in Suleymaniyeh.

We are face-to-face with a brand new crisis, as if there was a shortage of tension in the region. Kurds in the Kirkuk Provincial Council have voted to raise the flag of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) along with Iraq's flag over state buildings in the province. Now - as expected - all hell is let loose.

Turkish Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlio?lu met with different political groups in northern Iraq and urged Iraqi Kurdish political actors for "unity and stability" in the political arena of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), underlining ongoing threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), diplomatic sources have told the Hürriyet Daily News.

Iraqi Kurdistan president Massud Barzani's extended term expired on Aug. 20, leaving the autonomous region in a "legal vacuum" that Kurdish political parties are still trying to resolve.

The president of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has said during a visit to Peshmerga forces operating in Arbil and Mosul that the autonomous region is insistent about its independence, while also calling for unity against a recent call for dual management in the Kurdish region. 

The two leading Iraqi Kurdish parties have been removed from the United States terrorist list, a senior U.S. official has announced.

The Kurdistan Democratic Union (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) have been recognized as Tier III terrorist group under the Patriot Act of the U.S. since 2001, although both organizations are long-time U.S. allies.

A Yazidi lawmaker has pleaded in tears at the Iraqi Parliament for help, as reports of massacres spread after militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attacked the district Sinjar near the Syrian border. Feyyan Dahil, a member of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), said at least 500 people had been killed and 500 women were abducted as concubines.