Turkish Foreign Minister Cavosoglu has spoken clearly: the Kurds will never be able to raise the flag on Kirkuk, the city of northern Iraq disputed between Kurdistan and the Turkmen community.
The declarations take place in the aftermath of the decision by local authorities to incorporate the important oil center into the Kurdish autonomous region. The Baghdad central government chaired by the Shiite Al-Abadi also opposes the decision, but seeks to avoid open confrontation with the Kurds, allied to date in the fight against ISIS in Iraq.
Turkey does not intend to give up, with the official motivation that the region's ethnic balance can not be changed without running the risk of triggering further outbreaks of tension.
Kirkuk contends Mosul the third place among the cities of Iraq and is the center of the country's largest oil reservoir. Its population is a mix of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen but in the maps of Turkish revanchism it belongs to the Ottoman Empire, whose intentions have been awakened by President Erdogan in a not too veiled way.
The position taken by Cavosoglu, a very active minister in the international diplomatic scene (he was rejected by the Netherlands on the eve of the elections, nda) shows all the nodes of the Iraqi match that are coming to the fore behind the war in ISIS. Ankara makes a big voice because it is frightened by the possibility of real independence and an enlargement of Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkish troops are behind and within the Iraqi border for months, ready to intervene as already happened in Syria.
The difficulty of imagining a stable future for Iraq after the capitulation of the Islamic State is also one of the causes of the stagnation of the anti-ISIS Coalition offensive on the Mosul front. Despite progress, the operation in northern Iraq has entered the sixth month and the polemics between allies are on the agenda. To deny the accusations of excessive delay, the same American general Votel, commander of CENTCOM and responsible for operations in Iraq, had to intervene personally.
The Turks are in front of yet another strong choice within the Syro-Iraq crisis. In fibrillation for the outcomes of the campaign against the Caliphate in Iraq, in Syria they were forced to the umpteenth adjustment in the race. The operation Shield of the Euphrates it has been unofficially over since mid-March. Although Erdogan had asserted that the Turkish forces would arrive at Raqqa, the army of Ankara and its allies stopped at Al Bab. The rapid and unforeseen advance of Syrian troops has cut the road to the Turks to the south, creating some bad mood. The Russian mediation has so far prevented Syrians and Turks from coming to a full scale confrontation.
Turkey, however, has no intention for the moment to renounce its share of Syria. Thousands of militiamen integrated so far in the operation Shield of the Euphrates, including many of the Free Syrian Army erected from Ankara, they are moving from the plains east of Aleppo to north-western Syria where they are ready to resume fighting against the forces of Assad. It is not by chance that the Russian air force against the jihadist rebels in the area between Latakia Governorate and Idlib Governorate is incessantly resumed.
Turkey's response to the new, softer American line to Assad will define the temperature of the Syrian crisis in the coming months and the duration of the war. If Ankara continues to support the northern jihadist rebels, the game will still be long.
(photo: SAA)
