At a time when Turkey's warm relations with the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have reached the level of a strategic energy partnership, Abdullah Ocalan, the potential leader of a would-be Turkish Kurdistan, has called for a permanent peace between his armed followers and the Turkish government. This is no mere coincidence and is perhaps even a sign of an upcoming Turko-Kurdish axis that could alter balances in the Middle East. First, a brief summary is offered on how the current situation came to be.

From the establishment of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and into the 21st century, one could not speak of an alliance between Turkey and the Kurds for a very simple reason: Turkey did not acknowledge the existence of Kurds. In Turkey, this was manifested by a paranoid oppression of Kurdish identity. Abroad, the same mindset expressed hostility toward any kind of Kurdish political presence, such as the one in Iraqi Kurdistan. Kemal Ataturk's famous motto "Peace at home, peace in the world" was understood in part by most of his followers as "No Kurds at home, no Kurds in the world."

With the progression of the new century, however, Turkey began to change. A new political elite spearheaded by the Justice and Development Party (AKP), led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, gradually replaced the ruling old guard. This new elite was less secular than its predecessors as well as less nationalistic and more pragmatic. Hence, soon came Turkey's diplomatic rapprochement with the KRG, beginning in 2007 in tandem with booming Turkish business and civil society. Within a few years, Ankara and Erbil, which had been mutually suspicious if not outright hostile toward each other, became friends and partners. The fact that both capitals disagreed with the policies of the Nouri al-Maliki government in Baghdad, and the "Iranian axis" that it implied, also helped bring the two closer.

The latest step in the Ankara-Erbil rapprochement is a deal to allow Iraqi Kurdistan's oil and gas exports to flow to international markets via Turkey. Although central government officials in Baghdad categorically object to the plan, arguing that the Iraqi constitution does not give Erbil the authority to enter into such an agreement, the Kurds in the north differ in their constitutional interpretation and insist that they have every right to sell their own oil and gas.