Al-Jazeera World - Return to Arms Hadaka (2017)

A rare and exclusive insight into an Iranian Kurdish political party in exile in northern Iraq which has recently renewed its military activity. In this film, Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Salam Hindawi gains access to the little-known but long-established Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan - or Hadaka, to use its Kurdish name.

Hadaka was founded in 1945 and is a left-wing group that wants Kurdish self-determination in Iran. In 1946, it briefly created a Kurdish republic in the western Iranian city of Mahabad, but when this was overturned a year later, Hadaka almost disappeared as a political entity. However, it managed to survive and was reorganised in the 1960s. It took part in the Iranian revolution in 1979, but Ayatollah Khomeini refused Kurdish demands, suppressed Kurdish political parties and forced Hadaka into exile.

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