Lahur Talabany says he has ‘temporarily’ handed over power to Bafel Talabani

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Lahur Talabany, the co-chair of Sulaimani’s ruling party the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK ) said on Monday that he has “temporarily” handed over power to his rival co-chair and cousin Bafel Talabani.

“I am happy that we have taken the party route to solve the problems, the only right and permissible solution, which is to return to the leadership council, which has gained legitimacy in the congress, because we have been elected by the congress not with a coup d’etat,” Talabany said in a video message published on his Facebook page for Eid al-Adha.

“For that sake, I have temporarily given my powers to my co-president with an open heart and with my own consent until our party's internal rules are amended,” he added.

Talabany says the handover is dependent on “the formation of a committee at the politburo to investigate and follow up on all the baseless allegations and propaganda in some media and social media that were being published to mislead, and for the results to be published for the leadership council and the public.”

He also confirmed that he will step down from his position as the Kurdistan Coalition head “and will entrust its responsibility to co-chair and leadership council” of the party.

A PUK politburo member confirmed to Rudaw on Saturday that Talabany has handed over all power to Bafel. The decision was made on Thursday when the two party leaders and politburo members met to resolve tensions between the cousins, a few days after Bafel appeared to force Lahur out of his position.

Bafel and his brother, Qubad Talabani, changed the heads of the PUK’s intelligence agency and counter-terrorism units, replacing officials who were close to Lahur Talabany with others loyal to Bafel. He also changed his social media bios to “president” of the PUK, and official party media are now referring to Lahur Talabany as “former co-president.”

The offices of a channel affiliated with Lahur was also raided on July 13 by security forces who broke and seized equipment, and detained some employees.

“I think that the Peshmerga forces and the security forces should only point their guns at the face of the enemy, in the face of danger on our region and Kurdish civilians, and should not allow me or anyone else in this region to use them for their own personal purposes,” Lahur said on Monday.

PUK media did not report the handover, but said the politburo had reached a decision to solve the problem and protect the unity of the party.

The cousins were elected as co-chairs of the PUK in February 2020, following years of wrangling within the party over who would succeed the late Jalal Talabani, who died in 2017.

In his latest post on Monday, published the same time as that of his rival, Bafel referred to himself as the co-president.

“I hope we will make this Eid an opportunity to review our policies and form a new national strategy between the Kurdish political forces and parties so that we can overcome our problems together and work together to solve our fundamental problems,” he said.