"The Kurds are alive and their flag will never fall” - Nationalism and internal national dynamics in Kurdistan Regional Government

Abstract: Nationalism and the urge for independency has increased since the development of a Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq. The purpose of this study is to further our understanding of the internal national dynamics in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), and describe the political parties’ perspective on independency in relation to tribalism and national identity. The main empirical material has been collected through interviews with representatives of the three largest political parties in KRG. The theories “imagined community” and “modernist nationalism” have been used to contribute to the understanding of nationalism in KRG. The method used in this study, the functional idea analysis, aims to look at the function of ideas in a political context. The political ideas of independency, tribalism and national identities have hence been selected and constitutes the foundation of the analysis. The results show that the nationalist movement taking place in Iraqi Kurdistan is based on an imagined community shared with Pan-Kurdistan, where they, as the largest stateless people in the world, claim to be entitled to self-determination. However, the nationalist aspirations of the political parties aim at Iraqi Kurdistan exclusively. Political modernism explains this by contending that nationalism is foremost about politics and power.