Meanwhile, in the North

Juan Cole has two good items regarding the Turkish incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan and the overall Turkish attitude towards the Kurds harboring of PKK terrorists. What comes through, of course, is the inherent complexity of the issue of Iraqi Kurdistan and the potential for disaster should the needle swing too widely in either direction. In the first posting, Cole points out that things have changed for the better for Kurds in Turkey:

things have changed in the past 30 years, though the good Lord knows that much remains to be done in ensuring that Turkish Kurds are first class citizens (not a goal that will be reached by thuggish, murderous PKK tactics). First of all, Turkish Kurds have spread all over Turkey as guest workers. There are millions living in cities such as Istanbul and other industrial centers. Political scientists studying their voting patterns have found that they vote like other Turkish citizens living in the same place. That is, Kurds in Istanbul vote like the Turks in surrounding neighborhoods. There is no pan-Kurdish political identity in Turkey.

However, Turkish anger at the Iraqi Kurds should not be underestimated:

In other words, the Kurdistan Regional Government is playing the Taliban to the PKK's al-Qaeda, from the point of view of the Turkish government. It is harboring 5,000 PKK fighters. Turkey has a strong and impressive military tradition and does not take casualties in its security forces lightly. What is going on is clearly a casus belli.

and at the end of his second post, he concludes:

I continue to be just amazed that no one in authority in Iraq is taking any steps to try to avert such a crisis. I earlier suggested a partion of Kirkuk province before the referendum as a way of defusing the tensions. But it seems like that the referendum will be held in the whole province and that the whole of it will go to Kurdistan. Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has said that this development would be a cause for war in and of itself.

The train wreck continues to unfold.

Now, Cole is a very polemic writer, and is prone to taking extreme positions with regard to his area of expertise. However, he is an expert, and has been on the ground in Turkey as recently as last month. As a weather man, he knows which way the wind is blowing, and I'd not be totally surprised if he is right that the Bush administration is asleep at the wheel once again.