Led by Nawshirwan Mustafa, a prominent Peshmerga commander and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) politburo member who split from the party, the new party railed against corruption and mismanagement. It also slammed the family rule by the PUK and its partner in government, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). Gorran condemned partisan control of Kurdish security forces and called for a constitution centered around an empowered parliament, as opposed to the top-down presidential system that was developing.
“It was a very effective movement that managed to gather many different diverse voices — intellectuals, religious people, patriotic people — who were sick and tired of PUK and KDP rule and corruption,” Rebwar Fatah, a Kurdish writer and journalist, told Amwaj.media. “This was received warmly by people. It was really amazing to see how fast Gorran became a very, very effective force in Kurdistan.”
This year, the party is marking the 15th anniversary of its establishment. But the celebrations have been marred by a sense of gloom. The party that had once been the hope of so many people in Iraqi Kurdistan is a shadow of its former self: exhausted, divided, co-opted, and unpopular.

Rise and fall in the polls
Just months after its formation in 2009, Gorran achieved a historic success in the elections for the Kurdistan Parliament. The new movement won 25 out of the 111 seats in the assembly. Meanwhile, the KDP and PUK, running jointly as the “Kurdistani List,” lost 19 seats between them. This sent shockwaves on the political stage: for the first time since 1991, there was a credible opposition group in Iraqi Kurdistan.
With a groundswell of popular support, Gorran followed up its initial success in the subsequent 2013 Kurdistan Parliament elections by displacing the PUK as the second largest party in the regional assembly. In some ways, this very success sowed the seeds of its subsequent demise by setting up a strategic choice that saw it enter government with the largest party in Iraqi Kurdistan, the KDP.
While the object of any opposition group is ultimately to gain power and implement its policy program, Gorran failed to achieve this goal. Ultimately, many of its supporters came to believe that the party had been co-opted by the very system that it had been set up to dismantle, even if its actions were well-intentioned. “They decided to do this inside the corrupt government. It is like you get into a sea of oil and try to clean the sea. Well, it does not work,” Fatah said.
Until 2015, the party continued to put up a fight. Since then, however, it has become an increasingly spent force. Gorran’s founder and talisman, Mustafa, died in 2017. Near the end of his life, he controversially transferred the land where the party’s headquarters is located in Sulaimaniyah city and other business assets to his sons instead of the party organization. This shocked supporters and accelerated growing factionalism within the party. Two years later, Gorran again joined the KDP and the PUK in government and has since effectively abandoned its credentials as an opposition force.
In each subsequent poll, Gorran has hemorrhaged votes and lost seats. In the 2018 elections for the Kurdistan Parliament, it won 12 seats, but by the end of the term many of the party’s MPs and senior cadres had broken with the leadership. In the 2021 polls for the parliament in Baghdad, the party ran on a joint list with the PUK and won no seats. Party leader Omar Said Ali promised a soul-searching review, but little has changed as a result.
Now, a decade-and-half after its spectacular emergence onto the scene, the party heads into long-delayed elections for the Kurdistan Parliament as a scattered force.

Dire prospects
The political stage in Iraqi Kurdistan is dominated by the KDP and the PUK. In the three decades of the region’s self-governance, the duopoly has become increasingly unpopular. Both are widely seen as corrupt and authoritarian, with the respective Barzani and Talabani families dictating the direction of their parties. In its rhetoric, Gorran promised to address these anti-democratic dynamics — and still does.
“The Gorran Movement is very different from the ruling parties in terms of vision, program and philosophy,” Bestun Shahid Jabar, one of the movement’s candidates in the upcoming Kurdistan Parliament elections in Sulaimaniyah Governorate, told Amwaj.media.
Jabar attributed the party’s current troubles to the loss of Mustafa’s leadership and the internal divisions that the late leader’s absence opened up. At the same time, he did not agree that it was a mistake to go into government with the KDP.
While the Gorran candidate was scant when pressed on the details of what his party could offer voters, he argued that “the election of a new leadership and fresh blood is important for this stage” and insisted that his movement would be the one to deliver them.
One key challenge for Jabar and his colleagues is that those who supported Gorran 15 years ago—and opposition-minded voters that have aged into the electorate since then—no longer believe that the party is the vehicle to achieve change. “They will never come back. I think they are dead,” Fatah said of Gorran. “They will be extremely lucky if they get a few thousand votes, but nothing to put them in any position in parliament.”
Importantly, Gorran’s failure to advance against the ruling duopoly has bled out into the opposition movement in Iraqi Kurdistan more broadly. Several other opposition parties are set to contest regional legislative elections on the same fundamental elements of Gorran’s platform: breaking up the ruling duopoly, ending family rule, eliminating partisan security forces, and fighting corruption.
Yet, when looking at the New Generation Movement, the People's Front, and the National Stance Movement, it is hard to miss that many of their faces were part of Gorran in the past. Against this backdrop, some voters foresee that the new parties will face the same choices that caused Gorran to founder upon the rocks with even less chance of success.
“It is like a pomegranate,” Fatah said of Gorran, comparing it to one of Iraqi Kurdistan’s symbols. “You throw it away, and it becomes many, many pieces. And these pieces are never as strong as the original fruit itself.”
By Winthrop Rodgers
Amwaj