Turkey mainly, Iraq and the Kurds (2006-2014)

[AdamG]

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey: Kurdish militants killed 10 soldiers and wounded at least 60 when they fired rockets at a military convoy in eastern Turkey on Tuesday, security sources said.

The past few months have seen some of the heaviest fighting since the PKK, considered a terrorist organisation by Turkey, the United States and the European Union, took up arms in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Mid...#ixzz29O3XjMOS
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)

[AdamG]

Iraq urges the Kurdish autonomy to approve the deployment of troops on the border with Turkey to prevent the Turkish troops' entering Iraq, as well as to stop air strikes on the country against the militants of Kurdistan Workers' Party, head of the Iraqi parliamentary security committee Iskander Witwit told Trend on Wednesday.

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/14...perations.html

[AdamG]

As the confrontation between Turkey and Syria escalates, Ankara is readying not only for possible war against Syrian President Bashar Assad, but also against Kurdish separatists. Turkey fears they may be emboldened by the situation in Syria and resurrect their cause.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-861396.html

[AdamG]

Update on Syrian Kurdistan
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2...oops-flee?lite

[davidbfpo]

An article by Bill Park, with aspects my media watching had not spotted, e.g.:

..more than 600 Kurdish prisoners are entering the eighth week of a hunger-strike...

Then there is the political decision to:

The vigorous crackdown on even relatively moderate Kurdish leaders removes the most likely interlocutors from the political scene, and surely serves to harden Kurdish sentiment

Demography could alter the scene, my emphasis:

More compelling is the recent estimate by the Turkish statistical institute that there are over 22 million Kurds in Turkey, constituting more than 30% of the republic’s population. Furthermore, the Kurdish birthrate in Turkey is reckoned to be at least twice that of ethnic Turks. Although these figures are fuzzy around the edges, they suggest that within a couple of generations, Kurds could well make up the majority of Turkey’s population. True, many are already assimilated; but can the government really believe that the current campaign of political repression and marginalisation, and violence rather than dialogue, stands any chance of assimilating the remainder of them - ever, let alone before such time as Kurds outnumber Turks?

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/bill-pa...king-to-crisis

[AdamG]

Iraq’s premier has warned Kurdish regional security forces not to advance towards government troop positions, a military spokesman said on Monday, after deadly clashes in a flashpoint northern town.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s office warned the Kurdish forces, known as peshmerga, “not to change their positions or approach the [federal] armed forces,” Iraqi military spokesman Colonel Dhia al-Wakil said in a message received by AFP.

http://english.alarabiya.net/article...19/250558.html

[AdamG]

TUZ KHURMATU, Iraq — A shootout over an unpaid gasoline bill in this small but hotly contested town has sent tensions soaring between the Iraqi government in Baghdad and the northern region of Kurdistan, threatening to ignite the Arab-Kurdish conflict that many have long feared.

On Tuesday, the Iraqi army rushed thousands of troops and reinforcements to the area after the Kurdish regional government placed its pesh merga militia forces on high alert along the arc of disputed territory that spans the borders of the semiautonomous Kurdish enclave.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...l?tid=socialss