ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdistan Region's parliament will kick off a two-month summer recess on Wednesday despite having convened just once since lawmakers were elected back in October 2024, and as the formation of the Region's tenth cabinet remains deadlocked, with rival parties still unable to agree on its makeup and key posts.
Omar Gulpi, a Kurdistan Justice Group (Komal) lawmaker who won a parliamentary seat but has still not been sworn in, told Rudaw's Soran Hussein on Tuesday that "the break will begin on Wednesday, July 1st and continue for two months, in accordance with the parliament's internal bylaws."
He explained that the Kurdish parliament operates under two legislative terms each year - the first running from the start of March until the end of June, the second from the start of September until the end of December.
The Kurdistan Region held legislative elections in October 2024, with the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) winning 39 seats and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) securing 23 in the 100-seat legislature.
With no single group winning an outright majority, the two rival parties have since been engaged in government formation talks that have stalled over disputes regarding the cabinet's structure and the allocation of key posts.
Amid the deadlock, the Kurdish parliament has met just once since the October elections - in December 2024 - but failed to produce any significant decisions, as lawmakers were unable to elect a speaker or his two deputies. No session has been held since and the December session has since been adjourned.
In June last year, Gulpi filed a legal complaint against the Kurdish parliament over its failure to convene regularly. “We [as Komal] deem this [failure to convene] as an oppression of the people of Kurdistan, the will of the people of Kurdistan, and the materialization of a parliament that cannot express the will of the people of Kurdistan,” he told Rudaw at the time.
Notably, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani in mid-June issued a pointed call to restore the Kurdish parliament as the essential first step toward forming the Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) tenth cabinet, as the legislature's paralysis stretched into its 20th month.
"The [Kurdish] parliament is not the property of any single faction; it belongs to the people of Kurdistan," the Kurdish premier told reporters, including Rudaw, in Erbil.
He insisted that "the first essential step" toward forming the next KRG cabinet is reactivating parliament, calling it "the rightful venue to resolve disputes through dialogue" - one that would then pave the way for government formation talks.
