Iranian Kurdish parties prefer dialogue with government
The Kurdish national parties in Iran, which boycotted Iran’s presidential election last year, may be losing support.
Despite a recent wave of executions, mass arrests of Kurdish activists and the banning of newspapers, Kurdish parties in Iran prefer dialogue over taking up arms against the Iranian government. While Syrian Kurds are taking steps toward more Kurdish autonomy, in Iran, Kurdish parties are slowly losing support in exile.
The Kurds make up an estimated 15-17% of the population in Iran and suffer from human rights abuses.
Although the Kurdish nationalist parties called for a boycott of the Iran elections in June, President Hassan Rouhani received 71% of the votes in Kurdistan as a result of the weakness of the Kurdish parties.
“People do not follow the parties, they have no connection to them. In the past, the parties had a lot of people, but when they were exiled to London, Sweden and Hawler [Erbil], they lost much of their representation in Iran. They gave up their military activities,” said a Kurd from the town of Mariwan, who wished to remain anonymous for security reasons.
