LONDON — The Kurdish parties in Iraq and Syria are increasingly engaged in a low-scale cold war. The new power vacuum in the Kurdish areas of Syria has led to an escalation of tit-for-tat arrests, political office closures, expulsions, demonstrations, media campaigns and border closures instead of more cooperation.

The imprisoned head of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan, and the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq, Massoud Barzani, have competed over the leadership of the Kurds for decades. Ocalan’s party is the most powerful Kurdish nationalist party in Turkey, while Barzani leads the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). The power vacuum in Syria has led to new competition between the two parties, after the PKK became the strongest actor in northern Syria.

On May 19, the Iraqi Kurdish security forces raided several offices and organizations close to Ocalan’s PKK in Iraqi Kurdistan in response to the arrests and expulsion of Syrian Kurdish politicians close to Barzani’s KDP by Kurdish forces in Syria.

“The KNK [Kurdistan National Congress] is a national organization for all parts of Kurdistan; it is not related to the PYD. Why do they capture these people, and close their offices?” Salih Muslim, the leader of the PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), told Al-Monitor in London.