page_title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
section_title: Founding of the Party
hierarchical_section_title: Patriotic Union of Kurdistan / History / Founding of the Party
caption_attribution_description: Nawshirwan Mustafa, Iraqi kurdish Politician
context_page_description: The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan is a Kurdish nationalist political party in Iraqi Kurdistan. The PUK describes its goals as self-determination, human rights, democracy and peace for the Kurdish people of Kurdistan and Iraq. The PUK is currently under the leadership of co-presidents Lahur Talabany and Bafel Talabani. The PUK was founded in 1975 by Jalal Talabani, Nawshirwan Mustafa, Fuad Masum, Adel Murad, Ali Askari and Abdul Razaq Feyli.
context_section_description: After the defeat of the Kurds in the 1974–1975 Revolt, on 22 May 1975, Talabani met in a coffee shop called Gligla, in Aum Rmana, Damascus, with Fuad Mausm, Adel Murad, and Abdul Razaq Faily. On 22 May 1975 the PUK announced its formation via Syrian and Lebanese media. The day after, Talabani visited Berlin in West Germany and met three other co-founders, Nawshirwan Mustafa, Omar Shekhmus, and Kamal Fwad, and some other activists. On 1 June 1975, the PUK was announced again in Berlin, and thus it was decided that 1 June is the anniversary date of the founding of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
  The PUK was a coalition of at least five separate political entities. The most significant of which were Talabani and his closest followers, Nawshirwan Mustafa's clandestine Marxist-Leninist group Komala, and the Kurdistan Socialist Movement (KSM), formed as a result of a series of meetings within the cadres of the Aylul Revolution who took refuge in Iran in 1975, including Omer Dababa, Ali Askari, Dr. Khalid, Ali Hazhar, Kardo Galali, Ibrahim Ahmad, Jamal Agha, Rasul Mamand, Mala Nasih, Abdul-Rahman Gomeshini, Milazm Tahir, Ali Wali and Kamal Mihedeen. The PUK served as an umbrella organization unifying various trends within the Kurdish political movement in Iraq.
  The PUK received grassroots support from the urban intellectual classes of Iraqi Kurdistan upon its establishment, partly due to 5 of its 7 founding members being Ph.D. holders and academics. In the early 1980s, the PUK evolved and broadened its appeal to all sections of Kurdish society, especially the rural classes.
  In 1992, the constituent groups within the PUK merged into a unified political movement that affirmed its social-democratic identity and affiliation. Their communique ascribed the collapse of the revolt to "the inability of the feudalist, tribalist, bourgeois rightist and capitulationist Kurdish leadership".
  The regional Kurdish assembly elections showed that the PUK's support lies predominantly in the southern area of Iraqi Kurdistan.
caption: Nawshirwan Mustafa was the former deputy secretary-general of PUK.
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