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POPSKurdistan Intensifies Split from Iraq
<<<"This lays the foundation for a separate state — it is not a constitution for a region," said Osama al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab member of the national Parliament. "It is a declaration of hostile intent and confrontation. Of course it will lead to escalation." Kurdish officials defended their efforts to adopt a new constitution that defines the Kurdistan region as comprising their three provinces and also tries to add all of hotly contested and oil-rich Kirkuk Province, as well as other disputed areas in Nineveh and Diyala Provinces. Iraq's federal Constitution allows the Kurds the right to their own constitution, referring any conflicts to Iraq's highest court. Susan Shihab, a member of Kurdistan's parliament, said she no longer had faith that the rights of Kurds under the federal constitution from 2005 would be respected. "What is missing the most in the new Iraq is confidence," she said. At the same time, though, some Kurds acknowledge that they have grown frustrated with
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POPS Tehran Calls Iranian Kurds "Terrorists" In an exclusive interview with Newsmax recently in Berlin, Ahmadi says that Iran was now working hand-in-glove with Turkey to get PJAK labeled as a terrorist organization. “Iran knows they can’t make trouble for us directly because they have such bad relations with Europe. That’s why they are going through Turkey.” The Iranian regime has been telling journalists and diplomats that PJAK and the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party) are the same. “But we are an Iranian party, and have nothing to do with Turkey,” he says. PJAK has become a serious threat to the regime in Tehran because it is fighting to overthrow the clerical regime in favor of a secular republic and because it favors equality between men and women, Ahmadi asserts. The group has around 2,500 armed guerilla fighters, 40 percent of whom are women.
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POPSWill the U.S. let Turkey go it alone against PKK or join assault on rebels? 
More: With 100,000 Turkish troops now said to be massed on the border with Iraq, Turkish officials and experts anticipate an operation against Kurds in as little as a week Some see this as a choice between keeping Turkey as an ally and appeasing northern Iraq," said Faruk Logoglu, a longtime foreign policy adviser and currently the president of the Center for Eurasian Strategic Studies. "It's more than that. The U.S. is now choosing between a united and divided Iraq A German Marshall Fund poll found that only 7 percent of Turks now think that the U.S. should play a strong role in international affairs and only 2 percent approve of U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. used to be very popular in Turkey. Standing in a street plastered with Turkish flags, Cengiz Atalay, 30, of Ankara said: "We are ready for war." Across town, student Samet Meydan, 21, noted, "What's now clear is that the United States is no longer a friend to Turkey." Erdogan said this week, "Americans should be w
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POPSTurkey to Split from Western Alliance? Turkey's 80 years project to enforce secularisation has always been disturbed by its Islamist population, and ethnic 'groupings' such as the Kurds (who make up a fifth of the people). This inherent instability is relevant to a nation that is seeking European membership on one hand, and looking to Syria as an ally in hunting down the militant Kurdish PKK>
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POPSSyria Supports Turkey's Kurdistan Move The under-reported attrition against the Kurds by Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq (pre-invasion) over 30 years or so: another factor in the complex emerging in the middle east.
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