[1] The PUK describes its goals as self-determination, human rights, democracy and peace for the Kurdish people of Kurdistan and Iraq.

This infuriated Ahmad and Jalal Talabani as the agreement omitted any mention of self-administration, let alone autonomy—the whole point for which the Kurds had been fighting a long-term guerrilla war.

Furious debates and campaigning followed, but Ahmad's and Talabani's arguments could not dislodge Mulla Mustafa's position as the popular figurehead of the Kurdish people.

A few days later Mulla Mustafa sent his son, Idris Barzani with a large force to drive Ahmad, Talabani, and their 4,000 or so followers into exile in Iran.

[6] After the defeat of the Kurds in the 1974–1975 Revolt, on 22 May 1975, Talabani met in a coffee shop called Gligla, in Aum Rmana, Damascus, with Fuad Mausm, Adel Murad, and Abdul Razaq Faily.

The day after, Talabani visited Berlin in West Germany and met three other co-founders, Nawshirwan Mustafa, Omar Shekhmus, and Kamal Fwad, and some other activists.

The PUK was a coalition of at least five separate political entities, the most significant of which were Talabani and his closest followers, Nawshirwan Mustafa's clandestine Marxist-Leninist group Komala, and the Kurdistan Socialist Movement (KSM), formed as a result of a series of meetings within the cadres of the Aylul Revolution who took refuge in Iran in 1975, including Omer Dababa, Ali Askari, Dr. Khalid, Ali Hazhar, Kardo Galali, Ibrahim Ahmad, Jamal Agha, Rasul Mamand, Mala Nasih, Abdulrahman Gomashini, Milazm Tahir, Ali Wali and Kamal Mihedeen.

The PUK received grassroots support from the urban intellectual classes of Iraqi Kurdistan upon its establishment, partly due to five of its seven founding members being Ph.D. holders and academics.

Their communique ascribed the collapse of the revolt to "the inability of the feudalist, tribalist, bourgeois rightist and capitulationist Kurdish leadership".

In July 2021, Bafel shut down a media outlet close to Sheikh Jangi and ousted several important commanders from the counter-terrorism and intelligence units of the PUK, who were seen as affiliates of him.

A day after however, on 21 February, the judicial authority on Iraqi elections in Baghdad declared Bafel Talabani the sole leader of the PUK.

[11] His new party, the People's Front received its license from the interior ministry on 17 January 2024[12] and was joined by several former PUK-members from Lahur's wing.