Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz was welcomed in Tehran earlier this month, where Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian hosted him and his delegation, while a source familiar with the visit said Pezeshkian thanked Turkey for helping prevent an Israeli plan to foment an armed insurrection by Kurdish groups in western Iran. The same account says Ankara then delivered its own message to Tehran: stop attacking Kurdish groups in the region. Ordinary people, as usual, get handed the bill for rival security doctrines and border anxieties dressed up as strategy.
The State Monopoly on the Kurdish Question
The source said senior Turkish officials tried to convince their U.S. counterparts that the plan, devised by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was unrealistic and could threaten Turkey's national security. Several people familiar with the matter said Turkey worried that, after the failure of the Kurdish insurgency plan, further Iranian action against Kurdish groups in Iran and Iraq could push them into Israel's arms. That’s the language of states talking to states: one government warning another not to push armed opposition into the orbit of a third. The Kurdish groups themselves appear here less as political actors than as terrain.
The report said Turkey is deeply invested in its peace talks with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, and that further Iranian action in Iraq, where the group is present, could undermine the sensitive process. The Turkish government plans to introduce draft legislation in parliament on Monday that would pave the way for former PKK militants to return to Turkey within six months. The partial pardon would offer non-violent PKK cadres an opportunity to reintegrate into society. Parliament gets the script. The state keeps the stage.
Mehmet Alaca, described as a prominent Turkish expert on Iraq, said increased Iranian military pressure could push Iranian Kurdish opposition groups such as the PDKI, Komala and the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, closer to the West, particularly Israel. He said, "The Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which has hosted these groups for many years, would bear the greatest cost of such a development." He added, "Besides risking the transformation of the region into a new front in the Iran-Israel rivalry, this scenario could make the balance between the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, or PUK, in Iraq, the party led by the Talabani family, even more fragile. It could also provide Tehran with a justification for further expanding its influence in the region on security grounds."
Security Coordination, by Another Name
Alaca said Iran has bombarded PDKI camps in northern Iraq since the war began in late February. He also said Turkey had sought to minimize the destabilizing impact of Iranian influence in northern Iraq by courting the traditionally pro-Iranian PUK, which normalized relations with Ankara earlier this month through an official visit to Turkey. The machinery is familiar. One capital courts a faction, another bombs camps, and everyone calls it stability.
He said, "Following the US and Israeli attacks on Iran, the KDP and PUK, despite their intense rivalry on numerous issues, adopted a common position that Iranian Kurdish opposition groups should not become involved in the Iran conflict." He added, "For Turkey, the most critical dimension is the peace process and the new security architecture it is seeking to build for the post-PKK era. The extension of the Iran-Israel rivalry into Iraqi Kurdistan and the re-emergence of the Kurdish card at the centre of the regional power struggle would directly undermine Turkey’s long-term security calculations."
That phrase, "new security architecture," does a lot of work. It means more management, more policing, more arrangements between armed authorities who insist they alone can decide who moves, who returns, and who gets crushed between rival flags. The people in the middle are not consulted. They’re administered.
The report also said U.S. President Donald Trump indirectly suggested on several occasions that Ankara had even considered entering the war to prevent the emergence of another Kurdish separatist entity on its borders, following its experience in Syria. It said senior Trump aides were highly sceptical of Netanyahu's regime-change proposal at the White House, including the notion that Kurdish forces could mount a ground invasion of Iran. The CIA director reportedly used one word to describe Netanyahu's regime-change scenarios: "farcical." U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reportedly said, "In other words, it’s bullshit."
That’s the whole arrangement in miniature: governments, intelligence chiefs, and ministers weighing up which armed project is realistic, which border can be stabilized, which population can be pressured, and which proxy fantasy can be shelved for later. The Kurdish groups named in the report are treated as pieces on a board by every state in the room. The board stays. The people underneath it don’t get a vote.