Why Not Another War?

Update: The call for calm didn’t last long: Iraq reacts sharply to Turkish incursion threat. People still remember the Ottoman Empire.

Ellroon of Rants from the Rookery notes that Turkey’s Chief of Staff wants to invade northern Iraq.

Kevin Drum of Political Animal picked up on the problem of Kurdistan and includes a map.

The Wikipedia article on Kurdistan adds some numbers:

According to the Encyclopædia of Islam, Kurdistan covers around 190,000 km² in Turkey, 125,000 km² in Iran, 65,000 km² in Iraq, and 12,000 km² in Syria and the total area of Kurdistan is estimated at approximately 392,000 km².

There are an estimated 30-40 million Kurds in the region distributed proportionally with the land area, meaning about half in Turkey, then Iran, Iraq, and Syria.

In terms of concern, Turkey, Iran, and Syria are not happy about independence calls coming from the Iraqi Kurds. While the US is complaining about “foreign terrorists” infiltrating into Iraq from Iran and Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Syria are alarmed about the free movement of Kurdish terrorists into their countries.

The latest round of problems started over the plan for a referendum on the status of the city of Kirkuk, which, coincidentally, is sitting on oil.

The Turks are backing the Turkomen who live in the area, and don’t want the Kurds to have a ready source of income. The statements of the Turkish government have touched the pride of the current leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, who apparently believes he is the new Salah al-Din, and caused him to make references to the current “Kurdish problem” in Turkey.

AFP reports that Talabani apologizes to Turkey for Barzani threats

Iraq’s president has apologized to Turkey for recent Iraqi Kurdish threats to fan separatist unrest in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast, the Turkish prime minister’s office said on Tuesday. President Jalal Talabani of Iraq telephoned Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan late on Monday to express “regret over the latest statements by Massoud Barzani,” Erdogan’s spokesman, Mehmet Akif Beki, said. He added that “Talabani underlined that they place great importance on ties with Turkey.”

Barzani, head of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, was quoted over the weekend as threatening to interfere in Turkey’s restive southeast if Ankara continued to oppose Kurdish claims on the oil-rich Iraq city of Kirkuk.

Responding to the remarks, Erdogan warned Iraqi Kurds on Monday that hostility toward his country could result in a “very heavy cost” for them in the future and charged that the Iraqi Kurdish leader had “overstepped the line.”

Hopefully the apology will put Turkish military plans on hold until the US “gets out of Dodge.” Last thing anyone needs at the moment is an active war in the one, quiet area of Iraq.