Kurdish Independence
| 12:16 UK time, Wednesday, 17 October 2007
A lot of our programme today was about the threat of a Turkish army incursion into northern Iraq. The PKK rebels have been coming down from the mountains with greater force and bigger numbers this year, and the government in Ankara is under extreme pressure from its citizens to strike back.
The families of killed recently have had a prominent place on TV news in Turkey.
It's hard to see a solution to a conflict created by history.
While officials of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, including todays' guest on World Update, insist they have 'no plans' for an independent Kurdistan, that doesn't seem to be confirmed in any way by the openly expressed views of almost .
Some analysts have argued since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 that was bound to lead to an independent Kurdish state, if not in name in fact.
The dream of such a state is old and in times past has seemed to the Kurds to be within reach. Following World War I and the defeat of Ottoman Empire, the Treaty of Sèvres promised an independent nation-state to the Kurds in Anatolia. But that Treaty was unacceptable to the new Republican Turkish government that succeeded the Ottomans - Turks fought successfully to regain the territory the treaty had taken away.
Then they had to build a nation state based on Turkishness - the minorities had to learn their place, was the Turkish view. Kurds in Turkey were described as 'mountain Turks' and their separate culture repressed.
Modern Turkey has had to move away from that repression in principle, if not always in fact. Use of the Kurdish language in education and journalism is still restricted, although not banned as it was under Turkey's military regime.
Kurds are estimated to make up a fifth of the Turkish population, and the largest number of Kurds is to be found in Turkey - Iran has the second largest number, with Kurdish northern Iraq third.
So the situation of the Kurds in the region has become a circle that apparently cannot be squared.
And had Turkey allowed US troops to invade Iraq from the north as well as the south in 2003, the insurgency might have been easier to control because the western provinces would have had a much heavier coalition presence much earlier.
That might have given Kurds a leading role in the overthrow of Saddam - too great a role for Turkey's tastes. Yet Iraq's continued instability and the growing confidence of the Kurds in their autonomous region in northern Iraq increases the likelihood of Iraq's breakup, adding to Turkey's disquiet.
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