Word: northerners
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Even on a normal day, Ibrahim Khalil, the complex straddling Turkey and Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, is a rather unusual international border crossing. Although it is an entry point into Iraq, there are no Iraqi soldiers, no Iraqi flags, and seemingly no Iraqi federal officials. Instead, the Iraqi side is controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government, which enforces its own customs and immigration policies, enforced at checkpoints manned by Kurdish peshmerga fighters under the flag of Kurdistan - a red, white, and green tricolor with a golden...
...about 40 Turks, mostly soldiers, by fighters of the Kurdish Workers Party, or PKK, a militant group of Turkish Kurds at war with the Turkish state (and branded a terrorist organization by the U.S. and EU). Turkey accuses Iraqi Kurdish leaders of allowing the PKK to maintain bases in northern Iraq as part of a greater Kurdish national agenda. (Iraqi Kurds say they are helpless against a hardened guerilla group that Turkey itself has failed to defeat in over 20 years of war - Turkey rejects these claims of helplessness, pointing out that the Iraqi Kurdish authorities have not even acted...
...recent road trip through the mountains of northern Iraq along the Turkish border, it was easier to find Turkish soldiers than Kurdish rebels. The Turkish army maintains at least four bases inside northern Iraq as a result of an agreement with Saddam Hussein after the American no-flight zone created a power vacuum in the region during the 1990s. In the town of Barmani, the Turks have a base with 35 tanks, and are repairing a disused air strip and building up troop levels, according to Iraqi Kurdish intelligence officers. But this is no invasion: The Turks supply...
...needs to help Erdogan's government by enunciating policies that assuage Turkey's nationalist military and the voice it has found in the popular street demonstrations. Thus, in recent days, the U.S. has sounded more accommodating of Turkey's military proposals after earlier criticizing plans to send troops into northern Iraq. This week, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said that while Washington still opposes Turkish military operations inside the country "because obviously there are troubles enough in Iraq" Washington understands Turkey's concerns. "It is absolutely imperative that steps be taken to prevent such PKK attacks in the future...
Still, Turkey's PKK troubles are part of a larger set of problems with Kurds in the region. Turkey has accused the Iraqi Kurdish administration in northern Iraq of failing to do enough to clamp down on the PKK. This week, Turkey raised the possibility of economic sanctions against northern Iraq, including restrictions on the flow of traffic and goods at a key border crossing from Turkey into Iraq, as well as cutting off electricity that Turkey supplies to the region. Turkey's biggest fear is that Iraqi Kurds are intent on establishing a separate Kurdish state on their border...