The history of the flag

The design was first arranged around 1920 in Istanbul, in the circle of the Society for the Advancement of Kurdistan. The earliest primary document known is a letter of 21 January 1928 from Memduh Selîm to Îhsan Nûrî Paşa, uncovered by historian Sadat Ulugana; it contains a drawing of the flag and states it was first arranged in Istanbul in 1920.

The design is often attributed personally to Memduh Selîm of Wan. He is documented as the flag’s chief advocate; the attribution as sole designer rests on thinner evidence.

Many websites state that the flag was presented to the delegations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 to 1920. No archival evidence supports this. The Kurdish delegation’s memorandum of 6 February 1919 and its accompanying map are documented; a flag is not. The claim traces back to one modern text that many sites copied from each other.

Xoybûn, founded on 5 October 1927 in Bhamdoun, adopted the tricolour with the sun as the Kurdish national flag. It flew during the Ararat rebellion, and in August 1930 contemporary newspapers documented it as the flag of the Xoybûn movement.

The Republic of Kurdistan was proclaimed at Mahabad on 22 January 1946 by Qazî Mihemed on Çarçira Square, while Ey Reqîb was sung. Its flag carried a different emblem from today’s: a sun flanked by ears of wheat and a pen, symbolizing work and learning. That emblem lives on in a party flag; the national flag kept the plain sun.

Flag Day, 17 December, commemorates Mahabad. The dominant account says the flag was first officially raised there on 17 December 1945; a variant ties the date to the lowering of the flag at the republic’s fall in December 1946. The first account is official; a contemporary 1945 document has not been found.

From 1959 to 1963 the state flag of the republic governed from Baghdad carried a yellow sun that explicitly represented the Kurds, an early recognition of the sun as a Kurdish symbol at state level.

With the Kurdistan Region’s institutions established in 1992, the flag entered de facto official use. In 1998 and 1999 historian Mehrdad Izady, with Bijhan Eliasi and collaborators and in consultation with the Flag Institute, fixed the modern specification: 21 equal rays, the sun at half the flag’s height, defined colors. The Kurdistan National Assembly passed the flag law on 11 November 1999.

In September 2006 the flag replaced the previous state flag on public buildings across the Kurdistan Region. In 2017 the Kerkûk provincial council voted to raise it alongside the federal flag, the federal parliament voted for removal, and the governor refused; months later the flag was everywhere during the independence referendum of 25 September. Outside the Region, displaying the flag has led to prosecutions in Bakur and Rojhilat; there the flag remains an act of courage.

Every event above appears with sources and certainty levels on the timeline.