The irony of this outburst was not lost on the Iraqi Kurds, who were long shunned by Turkey because their experiment with self-rule seemed a threat to Turkish unity. Amid booming trade ties, there is growing talk of an informal confederation between Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds. Mr Erdogan is even said to have given Mr Barzani personal guarantees of defence against aggression by Baghdad.
If Turkey would only grant its 14m Kurds some of the rights enjoyed by their cousins in Iraq, the PKK’s terrorist tactics and antediluvian Marxist doctrine would surely lose its appeal. The trouble is that, buoyed by the Arab spring, the region’s 30m Kurds are increasingly looking beyond their own borders towards an independent state uniting them all.
Read the full article Violent times A worrying escalation of violence in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south-east
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