8 June NY Times editorial - A New Danger in Iraq.

Absolutely the last thing Iraq needs right now is to have thousands of Turkish troops pour across the border into the country’s one relatively peaceful region — the Kurdish-administered northeast. Turkey’s government needs to know that it will reap nothing but disaster if that happens...

Turkey does have a real problem. Guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or the P.K.K., have been striking into Turkey from their bases in Iraqi Kurdistan with growing impunity and effect, using plastic explosives, mines and arms that are readily accessible in Iraq.

These strikes have roused powerful passions in Turkey, stoked by generals eager to regain their primacy over the civilian government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which military leaders loathe for its roots in Islamic politics. So far, Turkish forces have occasionally chased P.K.K. rebels into Iraq, but they have always withdrawn.

Turkey’s feud with the P.K.K. is inextricably tied to other conflicts and rivalries inside Iraq. The most directly relevant is the tug of war between the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens over the oil-rich region of Kirkuk. Ankara’s fear of fears is that a quasi-independent, Kurdish statelet on its borders could embolden Turkey’s 15 million-strong Kurdish minority to demand autonomy or independence...