In Ankara, hundreds convened at a main square shouting "Down with the PKK and USA!'' Ambulances decorated with Turkish flags drove around main streets, their sirens wailing.
This is now a structural problem that can only get worse. Turkey cannot invade Iraq and hold territory in the mountains there against armed resistance. So the PKK will be there indefinitely. Turkey is asking the USA to pressure the Kurdish government to weaken the movement by doing things like slowing the movement of materials to the region.
The problem is that there is no amount of pressure the US can apply at this point that would get the Kurds to effectively hamper their brothers. Baghdad could do it if it had the authority, but the US made a decision at latest by 2004 that the US would support the Kurds in gaining independence from Baghdad.
There is now no way to root out the PKK, and worse than Israel's cluster bombs in Lebanon, the US has given anti-US forces in Turkey a gift that keeps on giving. We'll be reading about a dozen Turkish soldiers killed here, half dozen captured there for the foreseeable future. Every time it happens the future leaders of Turkey will be hearing from their parents that it is the treacherous Americans' fault.
There is no more goodwill between Turkey and the United States. Permanently. Turkey will fulfill obligations that are both required by treaty and that have tangible consequences for failure. Turkey's relationship with Israel went deeply against the grain of consensus sensibilities in Turkey's population. It existed out of the goodwill Turkey's foreign policy establishment felt towards the US. Like the Turkish relationship with the US, Turkey's relationship with Israel is now being carried by inertia but gliding to a stop.
The PKK is the biggest strategic disaster for the US of the Iraq invasion. Far worse long term than pinning down 150,000 soldiers where they are hostages to Iran.
