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"I can't keep track"

Because there are lots of complications.

One of the biggest threats to Turkey is Kurdistan. The Kurds want their own nation made up of south Kurdistan in Iraq, North Kurdistan in Turkey, East Kurdistan in Iran, and Southwest Kurdistan in Syria.

For many years the Kurds were in revolt against Saddam/Iraq and Saddam butchered them. The have also been in revolt against Turkey. So Turkey was opposed to Bush invading Iraq from Turkey because that would have given the Kurds more military strength to revolt against Turkey. Same situation now with attacking ISIS from Turkey. And as we give arms to the Kurds to fight ISIS, we have to be careful that the Kurds don't use those weapons to revolt against Turkey.

Turkey is a Sunni Muslim nation and opposed to the Shia so they have been very cooperative in letting foreign fighters travel thru Turkey into Syria to fight Assad. And we are trying to shut that down. Turkey sees ISIS as a threat, but only as a matter of degree. They support the Sunni against the Shia govt in Baghdad and Syria.

Even though Turkey is opposed to the Kurds gaining strength, they did allow a pipeline to be built thru Turkey from Iraq to the Mediterranean so the Kurds can get their oil onto the world market without having to go thru the Persian Gulf and the hands of the Shia govt in Baghdad. Turkey makes money off that oil going thru the pipeline and that also undermines the Shia govt in Baghdad.

Bush set up the Iraq nation and govt but the Kurds have never been committed to that. They want their own nation. They don't want to share the oil revenue from the Kurdish oil with the Iraqi Sunni or Iraqi Shia.

Bush wanted to maintain Iraq and not allow it to be partitioned into Northern Kurds, Western Sunni, and Southern Shia because that would be continuous war as they fought over the oil, which is mainly in the south and the north.

So Bush set it up so all three would participate in the govt and military plus share the oil revenue. But Maliki started purging the Sunni and Kurds from the govt and military as well as shorting the Kurds and Sunni on the oil money.

But now that the Turkish pipeline has been built, the Kurds can get their oil to market and keep all the revenue. So the Sunni think they are getting screwed by both the Shia and the Kurds. So the Sunni hooked up with ISIS to fight the Shia and Kurds.

So we kicked Maliki out of office and replaced him with another guy who is supposed to share power with the Kurds and Sunni. And we need to convince the Sunni to end their alliance with ISIS. We are going to do that by killing people and bribing people, just like we did in 2007 and 2008, with the surge.