Turkey-Iraq border war--Bitter war has Kurds divided among themselves

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/37454

The Turkey-Iraq frontier is the arena of a growing, although undeclared, conflict that threatens to destabilize the Kurdish majority regions of both countries. Attacks by the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, a Turkish Kurd rebel group that crosses back and forth into northern Iraq, have killed 17 soldiers this month. The Turkish military says that a series of retaliatory air strikes it carried out against PKK bases inside Iraq killed 25 fighters last week alone.

It adds up to one of the bloodiest stretches of fighting between the two sides in recent years. And while Turkey and the PKK have been exchanging blows for more than two decades, the stakes are higher than ever now. Some Iraqi Kurds worry that the stability of their semi-autonomous region here may eventually be added to the list of casualties.

Turkey's parliament this month extended for another 12 months the military's year-old mandate to launch cross-border strikes against the PKK in northern Iraq. The United States, which has 144,000 troops stationed in Iraq, promised to do more to help Turkey fight the PKK, which it considers a terrorist organization.

Immediately after the Oct. 3 attack in which the 17 Turkish soldiers were killed, the Kurdistan Regional Government, the body that administers northern Iraq, issued a statement condemning its fellow Kurds in the PKK. "We believe that such actions greatly hamper the efforts by all sides to build essential stability in the region, so that all parties can live together in peace," the statement read. A few days later, Massoud Barzani, the head of the Kurdish government, went so far as to say he hoped the PKK would stop its attacks.

It was a response that both infuriated PKK supporters -- who remember a time when Iraqi Kurds sought shelter in Turkey from Saddam Hussein -- and highlighted Barzani's apparent inability to do anything to curb the PKK, which freely roams the Qandil Mountain area in the north of Iraqi Kurdistan.

But the official condemnation reflected what is becoming an increasingly popular sentiment here in northern Iraq. After Turkey's ferocious response, even political allies of the PKK are saying that they wish the militia would do more to contain its conflict to the Turkish side of the border. Many worry that the group, while fighting for the independence of Turkish Kurds, will jeopardize the hard-won autonomy Iraqi Kurds have only recently gained.