WATCH: People celebrate National Flag Day in Kurdistan

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – People in the Kurdistan Region on Sunday celebrated the national flag of Kurdistan day, with banner-raising ceremonies held across the country while accompanied by the national anthem.

The Kurdistan Region Parliament in 2009 designated Dec. 17 as the National Flag Day in the region. Every year, the Kurdish people proudly hoist the flag while holding celebrations where they play the national anthem and wear traditional Kurdish dress.

The day was marked in different parts of the Kurdistan Region, including the province of Kirkuk, where the flag was raised in a local school while the anthem played.

In the morning, a large Kurdistan flag was also raised over the historic citadel of Erbil, located in the center of the Region’s capital. Many people, including a number of Kurdish officials, were present at the ceremony.

The flag was raised in front of the Kurdistan Region Parliament and Council of Ministers’ buildings in Erbil. The family of martyred Peshmerga fighters were present and hoisted the flag to honor their fallen fathers, sons, and brothers.

The Kurdistan Flag is also called Ala Rengin, Kurdish for The Colorful Flag.

The day is honored with music and dance in celebrations organized by schools and universities across the region, with thousands of students and instructors participating.

Kurdish social media networks were filled with pictures and videos of the special day, with people wearing Kurdish dresses and taking photos alongside the colorful flag.

The day is also celebrated by diaspora Kurds mostly settled in Europe, US, Canada, Australia, and Russia.

To most Kurds, the 2017 flag day was special as it followed the Sep. 25 referendum on independence in which 93 percent of the voters favored secession from Iraq. The flag is a symbol of Kurdish desire for independence and statehood.

Dec. 17 for Iranian Kurds also marks Peshmerga Day, as the Kurdistan flag was for the first time raised in Rojhilat some 70 years ago before the declaration of the short-lived Kurdish self-governing state of the Mahabad Republic in Iran in 1946.

Kurds are labeled as the largest stateless ethnic group in the world with a population of 40 million people living in the modern southeast of Turkey (Bakur), northwest of Iran (Rojhilat), northern of Iraq (Bashur/Kurdistan Region), and northern of Syria (Rojava).

Editing by Nadia Riva