How deep is Turkey's Sinjar entanglement?
Soon after speaking with Turkey's president, Kurdistan Regional Government leader Massoud Barzani dispatched peshmerga forces to Sinjar, Iraq, which led to a clash between Kurdish forces.
Turkey, which has developed rather odd relationships with some of its neighbors in recent years because of its reckless foreign policy, has begun treating Kurdish notables coming from Iraqi Kurdistan as official leaders.
According to former Turkish Consul-General at Erbil Aydin Selcen, when Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Massoud Barzani used to come to Turkey, he was received in Istanbul and not in Ankara, the capital. The meetings were not held in palaces but at less-impressive locations. The Kurdistan flag was never displayed. Meetings were held in Arabic, not Kurdish. To give the impression that the meetings were unofficial, nobody wore ties. In short, everything was done to prevent the meetings from being interpreted as recognition of Kurdistan.
Nowadays, Barzani is received as a reputable state leader and the Kurdistan flag is hoisted next to the Turkish flag. During his latest visit Feb. 27, the official reception menu in Ankara was printed in Kurdish. While Turkey adheres to combative relations with Kurds inside and outside the country, relations with Barzani are based on economic interests such as oil and Turkey’s design to use Kurds against Kurds.
For a while now, Barzani has been goaded into a policy of balancing Rojava’s leading political party, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), and its military arm, the People's Protection Units (YPG), with Syria's pro-Barzani Kurdish National Council (KNC) and the peshmerga of Rojava (officially the Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria). In Iraq, Turkey expects Barzani to oust the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) from Sinjar. Turkey fears the PKK will turn Sinjar into an operations base to facilitate access between Syria and Iraq.
