The rise and fall of movement for change in the Kurdistan region of Iraq (2009–2018)

Abstract

The Change Movement, also known in Kurdish as Gorran, was founded in 2009 to address the political demands of some parts of the public in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) for political and economic reform. Corruption, lack of transparency in government and financial affairs revenue and expenditure, the lack of legitimate and effective institutions, the existence of political party interference in all sectors of society, and the power-sharing agreement between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) had all contributed to widespread feelings of discontent among members of the public. Gorran took advantage of these feelings of disenfranchisement to demand a complete change in the political structure that had been built by the KDP and the PUK in the Region. Using this message, Gorran’s first election as an organized party in 2009 saw it become the second biggest political force in the Kurdistan Region and the biggest political party in the PUK’s traditional stronghold in Sulaymaniyah and the Garmian area. This research divides the Gorran Movement’s performance and effectiveness into three primary stages: (1) the opposition stage, which can be described as Gorran’s golden period; (2) the government participation stage after 2013, which can be described as the Movement’s period of weakness; and (3) the post-Nawshirwan Mustafa stage, which can be described as the Gorran Movement’s period of political exhaustion. The central argument of this research is that the Gorran Movement’s fundamental problem is that it became a part of the very structure that it had for many years campaigned against and is no longer a catalyst for reform.