Turkey has understandable reasons for its latest and largest incursion into northern Iraq in pursuit of PKK guerrillas. But whatever Ankara imagines it will achieve by the incursion, the outcome is certain to be less than it wants. There will be dead, maybe many dead, PKK rebels and a fair number of Turkish troops as well. But when the Turkish Army withdraws, the PKK will return to their shattered camps, regroup and within a few weeks or maybe months at most, the cross-border raids will resume.
The price Turkey will pay for this may well prove to be high. Diplomatically the cost has thus far seemed low but when a nation, any nation, invades a neighbor, it crosses a big red line beyond which lies the unknown.
As with past Turkish military action on its sovereign territory, the response of the Nuri Al-Maliki government in Baghdad was mixed. At first there seemed to be a muted criticism which only later became anything like a protest. The Iraqi government's inability to control the activities of Turkish PKK guerrillas operating from its territory into Turkey was the reason for Ankara's invasion. Any immediate anger from Baghdad would have been an admission of its own failure.
The real impact of the Turkish attack will be upon Iraqi Kurds. Not all Kurds support the attempt to create a breakaway Kurdish part of Turkey. Indeed, many feel that in an autonomous region of Iraq, they have already established a cultural and linguistic base for Kurds. However sympathetic they may be toward Turkish Kurds, they see that the PKK's insistence on challenging Ankara could endanger their own position in Iraq. Nevertheless, the military response is only likely to translate into greater support for the PKK.
What Turkey is really doing is seeking to wreak revenge for Kurdish guerrilla attacks. While it may make Turks feel better, it does not advance by an inch the solution to the Kurdish insurrection in Turkey, which has already claimed over 40,000 lives. The response, at people's level, is one of despair, as expressed by a Kurd civilian: "I don't think there is a solution. The state will not accept the Kurdish demands and the PKK will not come down from the mountains." There is a need for both parties to seek a solution that is less than the maximalist.
Part of Ankara's anger undoubtedly lies in the fact that the present government of Recip Tayyip Erdogan has probably done more than any other to offer Kurds a respected position in Turkey for their language and culture. To be fair to the Turks, it was the Kurds who chose to break the cease-fire that followed the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. For sure, Ankara may not have respected the Kurdish identity as fully as some Kurds wish and certainly remains unprepared to contemplate any idea of Kurdish secession but the genesis of the latest insurgency is entirely the responsibility of a new generation of PKK hotheads. Turkey has been sorely provoked.
