ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Region’s parliament warned the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to immediately stop the fighting that led to the deaths of at least two KDPI fighters on Sunday. “We seriously warn both Kurdish parties to avoid the use of violence and the gun in settling their political problems,” read a statement by Kurdish lawmakers about PKK’s deadly attack against KDPI in the Iran-Iraq border area of Kelashin. “It is a crime for a nation to use violence against its own,” the statement added. “This kind of incident is a flashback to the darkest pages of Kurdistan’s history and the Kurdish nation will not accept the recurrence of such events.” The statement also invited the two belligerents to settle their differences in the Kurdistan Region’s parliament. PKK fighters started surrounding a number of KDPI positions since Thursday, and had demanded the group leave the area. The KDPI, a party outlawed in Iran, has previously said it would not withdraw from the border region. Kelashin, where Sunday’s clashes took place, is a mountainous area in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region that borders Iran to the east and Turkey to the west. The strategic middle region has often been the scene of the two groups’ guerrilla warfare due to its location, where air strikes are difficult. The dispute is believed to have started when a KDPI force deployed to the border on May 10 with the intention of establishing a base in areas where the PKK was already entrenched. The KDPI is a Kurdish-Iranian party that has struggled for Kurdish rights in Iran for decades. The group has been based in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region for more than 30 years. The PKK is a Kurdish nationalist organization based in Turkey, but has been highly active in the Iranian border areas. It has been listed by the United States, the European Union and Turkey as a terrorist organization since the 1990s.
