Replies

Aside from the age on cultural difference between them, which is spoken of a bit in the post, the fact remains that Turkey would like very much to expand its economic finger into Iraq.
Turkish business see a lot of good opportunities in establishing commercial ventures with the Iraqi in the northern parts of Iraq and into the traditional Kurdish area.
With Turkey being allied with the US and NATO, and with the understanding the Turks surely did not help us one bit in the invasion of Iraq, perhaps the US will be able to broker some deals between the Iraqi government and the Turks.
At least I would hope so. Obviously it is not just Turkey, but also Syria which has a Kurdish population that is a thorn in their side.
Perhaps deals will go down. The Turks know they are putting the US in a very difficult position. We cannot be sending our troops against Turkish troops. And it really would not make sense in the short term nor long term, IMHO, for such a thing to be allowed to come to past.
The IG can hardly afford just now to be worrying about having to muster it's new army to border areas.
A lot is going to ride on how Iraqi president Talabani deals with the Turkish government in the weeks to come by all looks of things.
To have the new Iraqi army that the US is primarily training to protect it's country to have to fight with the Turkish army, a US NATO allie is not going to go over very well.
The Russians must be observing this very carefully as well as Iran. It could really screw up the US's long term goals in this region, as we can well understand.

The Turks know they are putting the US in a very difficult position. We cannot be sending our troops against Turkish troops

I was leaning toward that direction also. It is not the military might that is the driver in the Turk equation, but they are an ally to varying degrees. So it would be disastrous to engage the Turks militarily to oppose their incursion into Iraq. In effect the hands are tied somewhat for the US.

I was thinking along the same lines for the Russian factor also, it is not the huge edge we have on the battlefield that is the driver, but the what greater consequences may arise if they also come into the arena and we oppose them militarily. Once again our hands are tied to a degree.

Remember when Russia rolled a division into Bosnia, or was it Kosovo?

RW