Turkey and the Kurds
Turkey is in quite a tough situation. Domestically, there is a lot of pressure on Recep Tayyip Erdogan (prime minister of turkey), and Abdullah Gül (President of Turkey) to resolve this 30+ year conflict. With Northern Iraq being an autonomous Kurdish state, and some almost certain cross-border sympathies, it is no shock that attacks by the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party) have increased. Internationally, the U.S. does not want to have to pick a side in a conflict between Turkey and Northern Iraq. The U.S. also uses Turkish airbases for the war effort in Iraq, further putting pressure on Turkey to not just go into the region, guns blazing. Not that Turkey would anyway. The area between Turkey and Northern Iraq is very mountainous, and successful combat operations would be difficult to achieve. You could have a similar situation to that in Afghanistan, where even the U.S. is having immense trouble in dislodging and eliminating the Taliban. The last thing Turkey wants to do is have a quagmire of its own.
One thing to note is that Turkish parliament did give the military legal backing to have cross-border operations for one year. So basically the military can do as it sees fit for one year, without needing to ask permission to conduct operations. Let’s just hope they don’t get over zealous, and make the one relatively peaceful area in Iraq into another all out combat zone.
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