Quick, can anybody name 'our' ambassador to Ankara?

Any idea what the motivation behind the attack was? A strategy of inducing a Bushian overreaction/overextension? An attempt to indirectly destabilize Barzani/Talabani/whoever? Just angry people lashing out? A group looking for local short-term gain and not much concerned with longer term effects?

All things considered, that sounds like a pretty stupid thing to do and it is hard to imagine what, if anything, the PKK would hope to gain from such an attack at this point. Makes one wonder if those responsible are really PKK.

The American ambassador to Turkey is a career FSO named Ross Wilson, a Zoellick person who has held responsible posts before. It makes sense, given the nature of the Turkish government, the prominent American military presence in Iraq, and the kind of incident this was, that our contact with the Turks would occur at the defense minister level. But the recent surge of PKK terrorism within Turkey represents real trouble that will be with us for a while, so there will be plenty of work for the diplomats over the next several months.

This coming Turkish invasion of Iraq was the most obvious thing in the world. Ever since the Americans invaded Iraq, it was totally clear that the Kurds would threaten Turkey and that it was very likely it would come to war.

My position on this is two fold:
1) It is really sad that this whole war is increasingly causing death, destruction and instability in the region. As was predicted, i can see the Kurdish issue continuing to gather steam and increasingly dragging Turkey, Syria and Iran into the quagmire.

2) The Kurds have become too arrogant as a result of the American invasion. They currently dominate the Iraqi central government (ironically, since they usually don't even consider themselves Iraqi), and they have created a totally independent state in Kurdistan (in everything but name). I generally support Kurdish rights, and believe that they have lived a similar existence to that of the Palestinians, but practically speaking I think they need to check themselves and lower their aspirations for the moment. As this situation with Turkey shows, they have put themselves in a very vulnerable position by playing their hand too large. Right now it seems like they think they can do anything that they want and hide behind the Americans. But they are going to get a severely bloody nose unless they start to play it cool. This shows an extreme immaturity on their part and it is going to cause them to crash and burn if they keep it up.

WHo cares if Turkey invades to kill the PKK? Seems like a good idea, to me. After all, the Turks invaded numerous times in the 90s, with tens of thousands of troops. (Remember that we were formally protecting the Kurds at the time, through the No Fly Zones.) And there was no awful effect of those massive invasions.

No doubt, if the Turks do invade, Drezner is going to claim it is a disaster caused by the Bush administration. But that's the role of the academic - to claim that everything that occurs in the world is a disaster caused by Bush.

I got to say that it's kind of bizarre that a member of the foreign policy community - very serious or not - is yet again slapping his head in surprise regarding another consequence of the invasion of Iraq.

This conflict is a civil one between Kurdish rebels and the Turkish government. It does not effect the security of the United States and therefore this country will remain completely uninvolved and uncaring of the outcome. As soon as some terrorist kill some of our troops, we will release a harsh statement condemning the action and fire a cruise missile into a building somewhere to show we're serious. Until then, we must stay out of it or Mrs. Sheehan will be unhappy.

Perhaps your original article title is right on the money:

http://watchingamerica.com/hurryiet000001.shtml

Robert Bell: Of course, Mr. Ozkok acknowledges only one very narrow side to the situation, doesn't he?