Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, speaking Wednesday at the sixth Middle East Peace and Security (MEPS) forum, emphasized that, after the November 11 Iraq elections, any Iraqi party wishing to partner with the Kurds must respect clear conditions: the full and impartial implementation of the Iraqi Constitution.

“So any side that wants to partner with us or wants us to be a part of the government, our conditions are very clear: We want full implementation of the Constitution, without being subjective and choosing some articles and ignoring the others,” Prime Minister Barzani stated.

“We are trying to organize our relationship with the federal government based on the Constitution, and the Constitution clearly states how this relationship should be between both the federal government and the region,” Prime Minister Barzani added. 

“These issues … are still complex because every one of them was supposed to be implemented by an article in the Constitution; for instance, the disputed territories are still one of the main challenges between the federal government and Kurdistan.

“The hydrocarbon law is another issue … [We were] supposed to have the hydrocarbon law a long time ago, after the ratification of the Constitution. It shouldn’t have taken so long. Still, the government in Baghdad relies on outdated law that they inherited from the previous regime, and it’s not applicable to a federal system.”

Furthermore, he underlined that the ongoing budget dispute between Baghdad and Erbil, which includes delayed payments or non-payment to Kurdish government employees, has to be resolved according to the Constitution. 

“The budget issue is another area that needs to be resolved based on the Constitution. As a Constitutional entity, Kurdistan should have its share of the budget from the federal government and not have a ministry at the federal level interfere in the details of how the financial sector in Kurdistan is handled,” he said in a reference to the Iraqi Finance Ministry, which has often cut the Kurdistan Region’s budget. 

After the Iraqi parliamentary elections on November 11, 2025, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) won 27 seats with more than 1.1 million votes, becoming the party with the most votes in both Iraq and the Kurdistan Region. 

“The KDP is the largest party today in Iraq,” Prime Minister Barzani said. “We only have coalitions of several parties that have slightly more votes than us. But the number of seats that we have won are not compatible with the votes that we’ve collected. Just to be more precise, with more than 1,100,000 votes, we have 27 seats. But then you have the State of Law with 728,000 votes, which is almost 400,000 votes fewer than us, but they have 29 seats.”

Iraqi government formation

Following the finalization of the results this week, discussions on the formation of the new government have begun among Iraqi political parties.

“I believe, in this election, people voted for services,” Prime Minister Barzani said, adding that his party “has always been there to serve the people of Kurdistan … not just the Kurds, but everybody that lives in Kurdistan.

“We respect all the candidates. It’s not about personalities really. It’s more about the agenda and the Constitutional relationship between Baghdad and Erbil. In the last elections, we had certain ideas about how the future of the country should be and how the government should be formed.”

Furthermore, Prime Minister Barzani said that any future government should serve the people. “It should be moving forward. It should [provide] peace and stability. It should be the state of law. Basically, the law should be above all. We cannot afford to continue living in a country where the law is constantly violated and disrespected,” he said. 

“I think the biggest requirement today for the country is not the Constitution in itself, but the mechanism to implement the Constitution. No one who violates the Constitution is being held accountable.”

As an example, Prime Minister Barzani talked about last summer’s drone attacks targeting Kurdish oil fields. 

“The names of the groups [behind the attacks] were clearly communicated with the federal government. Some people were even arrested, but then they were released on bail and they didn’t face the consequences that they were supposed to. That basically shouldn’t happen in a country where the law should be above all.”

KRG formation

Furthermore, Prime Minister Barzani spoke about the new Kurdish cabinet that still has not been formed following elections held on October 20, 2024, despite talks between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the KDP, and calls by the United States to form a new government.

“We were hoping that together with the PUK we could form the government much sooner. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen,” Prime Minister Barzani said. “At the beginning, things were going very smoothly and we had a very capable team negotiating the agenda of the government, which was more important than the positions of the government.”

However, Prime Minister Barzani said the negotiations were stalled over dividing positions in the new government. “That’s when PUK began insisting on some very unreasonable positions. I think when you have elections, you need to respect the results, otherwise, what’s the point?” 

During the October 2024 elections in the Kurdistan Region, the KDP won 39 seats out of 100, while the PUK won 23 seats.

“Elections give you a winner and then give you maybe a lesser winner. That’s a very democratic process, but based on the size of each party. You should respect the formation of the government to be a reflection of the victory of each party. The KDP was very flexible and very generous to even give more positions to the PUK than they deserved based on how many votes they won in the election.”

Therefore, Prime Minister Barzani said it seems that the PUK had no plans to form a new government until the Iraqi elections. “Perhaps they miscalculated, [thinking] that the KDP would do poorly in the Iraqi elections, or perhaps they thought maybe they would lose leverage to negotiating positions in Baghdad if they formed the government in Kurdistan,” he said.

Prime Minister Barzani said that now, after the elections, the situation has changed. “Before these elections, we made it very clear that we are generous because we wanted to have a united Kurdish position before the Iraqi elections, which would give us more strength to negotiate with the government in Baghdad. 

“Today, [after the] Iraqi elections, conditions have changed. So we are going to negotiate the formation of the government based on the new conditions.”

Prime Minister Barzani expressed hope that the government would be formed at the end of this year. “But can we do it? This remains to be seen.”

Services 

Prime Minister Barzani also highlighted the services that the KDP-led KRG has implemented, such as the 24/7 electricity project Runaki, building roads, infrastructure, supporting education, and the bank account project MyAccount, and added that the voters have voted for these services. 

“I think that the government has managed to create trust between people and the government [by] being truthful to the agenda and the promises that we have made. In the end, people realized what we didn’t only promise, but we delivered, and I think we were rewarded for that.” 

Prime Minister Barzani also announced two new service projects: Bloom, which will support youth credit access, and e-Psule, which will facilitate electronic payments. 

“The electronic payment program will give the chance to every individual to pay from the comfort of their home whenever they want. But in order to do that, they have to have an account. So that’s why we were focusing on [the MyAccount program], to provide bank accounts to every individual in the country,” Prime Minister Barzani stated.

“Some of the projects we’ve started, we haven’t finished. So definitely we’re going to finish this project, [including the] digitalization of our services, digitalization of our economic and financial institutions,” Barzani promised.

Syria 

Finally, Prime Minister Barzani also expressed pride in hosting for the first time Syrian Democratic Forces Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi and Mohammed Ismail, head of the rival Kurdish National Council, an umbrella of Syrian Kurdish parties.

“This is what this forum is about. We are not only talking, but we are acting upon it. We are trying to build peace through action,” Prime Minister Barzani added.

The Prime Minister said that, especially in a country like Syria, with so many different “communities and ethnicities and religious diversity, there has to be an inclusive government.

“There has to be a Constitution that accommodates the needs of everyone and gives guarantees for equal citizenship to everyone. Dictating an idea by one community will never bring you peace and stability. So I hope they will come up with a Constitution where everyone’s heard, where the opinion of everyone is taken into account and everybody feels a sense of belonging and will not be excluded.”