But it makes a lot of sense.

towards the independence aspirations of its own Kurdish minority. Recognizing and trading with Kurdistan must complicate things for the Turkish government.

Kurdistan has been looking to resource-hungry Turkey for answers. A broad energy partnership between them ranging from exploration to export has been in the works since last year.

Majority Sunni Turkey's deepening ties with the Kurdistan region in northern Iraq have heightened tensions between Ankara and the Shi'ite-led government in Baghdad.

Kurdistan is already bypassing the federal pipeline network by trucking small quantities of crude over the Turkish border in exchange for refined oil products.

For decades, the islands on the Sea of Marmara outside Istanbul have been home to Turkey's most dangerous exiles and prisoners.

Ottoman princes were held there; Trotsky made the islands his home following his escape from Stalin's Russia; and a Turkish prime minister was executed there after a military coup in 1960.

The island of Imrali is now famous for one prisoner - a man Turkey often calls The Chief Terrorist.

His hair is white and he has lost weight. He spends his days reading academic works in his prison cell. He has an AM radio, and was recently given a television set.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21314776

through the South.

Perhaps that has been the case in the last couple of years, but my distinct recollection is that the northern oil prior to the Iraq War and sometimes during it was shipped out through Turkey via the Kirkuk-Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline. There was, and probably still is, a complete loading facility at Ceyhan, a Mediterranean port on the southeast coast of Turkey.

Are the Kurds looking to replace that pipeline or to refurbish it?

Or is the Reuters story not quite right?