Erbil Forum 2025 Conference

Date of publication: February 28, 2025

On 26 – 28 February 2025, Filip Sommer, Director of the Prague Center for Middle East Relations (PCMR) of CEVRO University, participated in the international conference Erbil Forum 2025, which was held in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). The conference discussed political topics such as the reverberations of the Kurdish parliamentary elections, the upcoming Iraqi (national) parliamentary elections (to be held in the fall of 2025), the current political and security setup in Syria after the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime, and the role of Western countries in protecting Syria’s religious minorities in this context. Other topics discussed included the current speech by Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan and expectations regarding the new US administration of President Donald Trump’s stance towards the region.

Economic issues were also raised, such as the current setup of relations between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Government of Iraq (GoI) in the area of oil exports and sending salaries to KRG employees by the GoI. From a security perspective, this included insights on the regional perspective and Iraq’s position in the plane of the conflicting relations between Israel (and the United States) and Iran and the regional rivalry between Turkey and Iran. Finally, the environmental situation in Iraq and the wider region and its impact on the regional geopolitical constellation were discussed.

Filip Sommer then made several new contacts with organizations working on Iraq, such as the Iraqi Oil Report, Human Rights Watch, and the American University in Washington D. C. Finally, links between the PCMR and the host organization, the Rudaw Research Center, were established.