The Iraqi government, the Kurds and Turkey:
BAGHDAD, April 11 (Reuters) – Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki sought to mollify Ankara on Wednesday after an Iraqi Kurdish leader warned neighbouring Turkey that any interference in northern Iraq would invite retaliatory action.
Massoud Barzani, president of northern Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region, angered Turkey with comments he made in a weekend television interview and repeated again on Tuesday at a ceremony in Arbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Barzani warned Ankara that if it interfered in Kurdistan, as it has threatened to do, Iraqi Kurds would interfere in Kurdish cities in Turkey.
Turkey’s prime minister said Barzani would “be crushed by his own words”. Washington called his comments “unhelpful”. […]
Maliki, in South Korea on Wednesday as part of an Asian trip, said in a statement issued by his office that Iraq’s foreign policy was decided by the government in Baghdad.
“Iraqi foreign policy is represented by the commitment to build the best of relations with its neighbours and non-interference in their internal affairs and by not allowing these countries to interfere in Iraq’s internal affairs,” he said. […]
Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul reaffirmed his country’s right, under international law, to take its own action if need be against the Kurdish rebels hiding in Iraq, a tacit reference to possible military intervention.
“We’re not making threats or indulging in bravado. We are simply making clear that events have come to a very dangerous point,” Gul told reporters in Ankara.
The Bush administration’s fixation on Iran as the greatest source of instability in Iraq is both wrongheaded and dangerous. If Bush isn’t careful we could soon be witnessing open conflict between Kurdish and Turkish forces even as we pour more American troops into Baghdad in furtherance of the our Grand Surge strategy. What will we do then, if two of our so-called allies in the War on Terror go after each other hammer and tong, tooth and nail? What options would we have? Bomb the Kurds? Threaten Turkey?
As Pseudo-Admiral Fred Thompson once remarked in The Hunt for Red October, “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”
