Kurdish opposition parties of Iran reunite after years of being separated

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and Iran's Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP-Iran) on Sunday announced their reunification after they split nearly 16 years ago, calling the reunion “a new stage” in their opposition to the Iranian state.

“Today, the Democratic Party is ending an unpleasant period in its history by regaining its unity,” read a joint statement from both parties, adding that the reunion “will be the beginning of a new stage in the struggle of this party against the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran and against any centrist mentality that denies Iran's multi-ethnicity and the national rights of different components in Iran.”

The KDPI is a Kurdish opposition party that has waged an on-and-off armed war against the Iranian government since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The party split following its 13th congress in 2006, but the KDP and KDP-Iran have been engaged in several rounds of unification talks over the years.

The statement said that the reunion has been one of the “legitimate demands and sacred wishes” of the people of Iran’s western Kurdish region (Rojhelat), adding that senior members of both sides have never dismissed the idea of reunification, but have considered it “a goal” and not just “a possibility”.

Going forward, the party’s organizations and bodies will reunite and resume under the name of the KDPI and through the “guidance of a common leadership” and “bilateral agreements,” the statement highlighted.

The KDPI was founded in Rojhelat’s Mahabad by Kurdish leader Qazi Muhammad in 1946 under the name of the Democratic Party.

In the 1980s, it fought alongside other Kurdish parties in a war against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Crops (IRGC) and other security forces in Iran’s Kurdish region when larger opposition eventually forced them out. Since that decade, they have been based in the Kurdistan Region prompting Iran to shell areas in the Region in what it says are efforts to target the group.

The reunification of both parties comes after a rights organization recently reported that Iran has stationed a large number of troops, armed with heavy weaponry, on the border areas between Iran and the Kurdistan Region, in an attempt to “infiltrate” the Region’s borders.