Tensions between Kurdish groups are making the fight against ISIS a lot more complicated
But Recip Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's authoritarian-minded president, also used the strikes against ISIS as cover for a Machiavellian power-play.
Shortly after Turkey allowed the US to launch strikes from Incirlik, Ankara carried out a wave of airstrikes and arrests against members of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group originally inspired by Marxism that has been designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU for its attacks against both military and nonmilitary targets.
Turkey claims that the campaign against the PKK is part of a two-pronged fight against terrorism and was launched following the PKK's killing of two Turkish police officers. But Kurdish politicians in Turkey claim that the campaign is actually aimed at shoring up Erdogan's vise-grip on Turkish politics following his party's loss of its parliamentary majority after 13 years in power this past June.
Despite Ankara's ultimate intentions, the campaign against the PKK highlights the incredibly fractious, and at times hostile, relationship between the Kurds' various political groups and militias.
Turkey's moves are calculated at striking at the PKK while deepening the rift between Kurdish factions - something that could end up complicating or even harming the fight against ISIS.
Kurd vs. Kurd
So far, the Turkish military has bombed the PKK in their strongholds in the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq.
On July 25, a day after Turkey began bombing the PKK in Iraq, President Massoud Barzani of Iraqi Kurdistan (the KRG) called Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and "expressed his displeasure with the dangerous level the situation has reached," according to Al Arabiya.
"The PKK overestimated itself. The peace process between Turks and Kurds' being threatened is not only related to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but also to hardliners in the PKK who do not want peace," Barzani said in an interview with reporters from Germany-based Focus magazine on July 31.
Barzani's shift towards supporting Turkish action against the PKK reflects the fractious nature of Kurdish politics. Iraqi Kurdistan is ruled by Barzani's political party, the KDP. The KDP's leading Iraqi Kurdish political rival is the PUK, which is aligned with the PKK.
In 1996, this KDP-PUK rivalry devolved into a civil war that only ended after US-brokered peace talks. Despite a power-sharing arrangement that the two parties agreed to after the US invasion of Iraq, the KDP and the PUK remain distrustful of each other. The KDP also worries that its good relations with Turkey could be ruined if Iraqi Kurdistan becomes too much of a base of operations for the PKK in its attacks against Turkish targets.
This rivalry between the KDP on one side and the PKK and PUK on the other has limited the various Kurdish militias' ability to work together. Both sides control their own peshmerga militia, leading to difficulties coordinating missions between the two armed groups. In April, the PKK and the KDP exchanged frequent barbs over each other's alleged military ineffectiveness as the two sides competed for control of Sinjar, in northern Iraq, after forcing ISIS from the area.
Erdogan's power play
This political bickering ultimately plays into Turkey's hands.
Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is almost entirely dependent upon Turkey - without the Baghdad government sharing any income with the autonomous region, Kurdistan's major source of income is from its oil pipeline with Turkey. This arrangement forces Iraqi Kurdistan to bend to Turkey's outsized influence. Meanwhile, Turkey supports the KRG to undercut its mutual rivals in the PKK.
