Iraq:As he arrived at the Turkish parliament in Ankara yesterday, prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said preparations for a Turkish military incursion into northern Iraq "have started and are continuing".
Fifteen Turkish soldiers were killed in southeastern Turkey on Monday and Tuesday; the single biggest loss in the war between separatist PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party) guerrillas and the Turkish military since 1995. Thirteen people, including seven village guards, were killed in an attack on a minibus in the same region on September 29th.
Experts believe that an incursion into northern Iraq is a trap which Mr Erdogan may be shrewd enough to avoid. The US and Iraqi governments firmly oppose Turkish action across the border. "We are in favour of cordial relations with the US, and not walking into a mess in Iraq," Suat Kiniklioglu, a prominent MP from Mr Erdogan's AK (Justice and Development) Party told me before the latest PKK attacks.
Mr Erdogan on Tuesday sent a request to parliament for approval of military intervention, but a vote could be delayed until after the Bayram holiday, which starts tomorrow.
"Erdogan may seek but not implement a parliamentary resolution, in order to head off anger over the PKK attacks," Bulent Aliriza of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said. "He'll say, 'Let me talk to George W Bush first, on November 5th'. The question is whether he can control events or events will control him."
In other words, one more PKK attack could force Mr Erdogan into taking action he has resisted since last April, when Gen Yasar Buyukanit, Turkey's army chief said: "The military have determined that intervention beyond our borders is essential to eradicate the problem. Now we await the political authorisation."
Mr Erdogan interpreted the military's impatience as an attempt to postpone or prevent the election of president Abdullah Gul, who is also a co-founder of the neo-Islamist AKP.
Mr Erdogan has improved government relations with Turkey's Kurdish minority.
In the July general election, the AKP scored far more votes in the Kurdish southeast than the Kurdish DTP. Ten days ago, Gen Buyukanit implied that DTP members should not be allowed to sit in parliament unless they condemn the PKK as "terrorists". "It's inappropriate to press DTP members to call the PKK terrorists," argues Cengis Candar, a prominent commentator who has taken a solitary, brave stand on the Kurdish issue.
"They have an organic bond to the PKK; I'm not saying an institutional connection. They literally have brothers and sisters [ fighting] in the mountains. It's a kind of IRA-Sinn Féin relationship. If we cannot talk to the PKK, how will we address this issue? If brute force were enough, we would have solved it long ago."
Mr Erdogan has responded to military pressure by telling the army to "clean up" PKK cells in Turkey before going after guerrillas in northern Iraq. Previous interventions in 1995 and 1997, involving 35,000 and 50,000 Turkish troops respectively, did not end the problem.
Furthermore, Iraqi Kurdish leaders co-operated with Ankara in those days. Now Massoud Barzani's KDP is sympathetic to the PKK. The Kurdish governor of Arbil, northern Iraq, on Tuesday threatened Turkey with "heavy casualties and material losses" if it intervened.
"If Turkey intervenes in northern Iraq, it will be the beginning of the break-up of Turkey," Mr Candar warned. "It would be obvious to every Kurd in the world that the aim is to stop the establishment of a Kurdish entity in northern Iraq, which already exists. It would be interpreted as a declaration of war on the Kurds by Turkey. Kurds in Istanbul and Berlin would all be part of an anti-Turkish front. Turkey would unify Kurds everywhere."
The Kurdish crisis has arisen at a time of great tension between the US and Turkey. A recent Pew Global Trend survey found that 91 per cent of Turks - a higher percentage than Pakistanis or Palestinians - distrust the US.
Yesterday's US congressional debate on a resolution recognising as "genocide" the massacre of Armenians in 1915-1916 has further envenomed relations. "Pressure is building on Erdogan," Mr Aliriza said. "The resolution is the wild card. If Congress passes it, it will become very difficult for him to avoid intervention in Iraq." Prejudice against Kurds is especially virulent among secularists who oppose AK party rule.
They accuse the Kurds of shared responsibility for the massacre of the Armenians, of staining Turkey's reputation through the practice of "honour killings" of women accused of adultery, of preventing their daughters from going to school and of "selling" teenage girls for dowry, despite a law banning marriage before the age of 18.