THERE IS A KURDISTAN, GET OVER IT:

Kurds, divided, face new future: Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan will meet with President Bush Wednesday; Iraq's Kurds will be on the agenda. (Nicholas Birch, 1/28/04, The Christian Science Monitor)

Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan is visiting the White House Wednesday, in part to dissuade President Bush from giving too much autonomy to the Kurdish parties running northern Iraq. Ankara claims that if other states give their Kurds an inch, Turkey's own much larger minority will try to take a mile. But the antipathy between Turkish and Iraqi Kurds calls into question the basis of Ankara's continued opposition to Iraqi Kurdish calls for a federal Iraq.

The reasons for the lack of solidarity between Turkish and Iraqi Kurds are numerous. They have been divided by borders for over 80 years. Most Iraqi Kurds speak a dialect incomprehensible to the Kirmanci-speakers in Turkey's southeast.

Above all, though, Turkish Kurdish perceptions of Iraqi Kurds have been clouded by memories of their own nationalist struggle. As Mahmud, sitting next to Abdulaziz in the cafe, puts it: "We have no faith in [Iraqi Kurdish leaders] Talabani and Barzani - the Kurds' only real hope is in prison in Imrali."

He's referring to PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, in solitary confinement since 1999 on an island off Istanbul, and largely remembered as a violent advocate of Kurdish separatism. An ex-Marxist, he targeted not just the Turkish authorities, but also local tribal leaders he considered responsible for southeastern Turkey's poverty.

In the eyes of many Turkish Kurds still sympathetic to Mr. Ocalan, Massoud Barzani, son of a charismatic tribal leader, symbolizes the feudal, tribal structures they would like to see eradicated from Kurdish society.

The distaste is mutual.

Turkish worries are perfectly understandable, but the Kurds have had a de facto state for over a decade and they aren't coming out of the war with less autonomy.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 28, 2004 8:21 AM