Style His Excellency Website www.krp.org | Appointer Directly elected | |
 | ||
Term length Four years, renewable once Inaugural holder Jalal Talabani (de facto)
Masoud Barzani (de jure) Formation 4 July 1992 (de facto)
14 June 2005 (de jure) | ||
The President of Iraqi Kurdistan heads the Kurdistan Autonomous Region in northern Iraq. He is part of the Kurdistan Presidency Council.
Contents
1992–2005
After the 1992 parliamentary election resulted in the two main parties, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), each holding 50 out of 100 seats, they decided to create a unity government (which was not recognized by the Ba'athist Iraq, led by Saddam Hussein).
The unity government soon collapsed and in 1994 a civil war broke out, which lasted until 1998. This resulted in the establishment of two Kurdistan Regional Governments in 1996, a KDP-controlled one in Erbil and a PUK-controlled one in Sulaymaniyah, each with their own President.
2005–present
After an official reconciliation between the KDP and PUK in October 2002, parliamentary elections were held on January 30, 2005 and on June 14, 2005 the KDP-leader Masoud Barzani was sworn in by the parliament in as new president and Kosrat Rasul Ali as the new vice president. In 2009 the system was changed to elect the president and on 25 July 2009 presidential elections were held resulting in Barzani's re-election.
President of Kurdistan Regional Government: