Behind the tension between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over Turkish retaliation against cross-border attacks is a larger debate over how much political power Kurds should be allowed to wield in Iraq.

Kurds have carved out a U.S.-backed state within a state in Iraq, which has given Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, guerrillas a haven to strike Turkish forces across the frontier. Iraq's Kurds might provoke further Turkish wrath by pushing to extend their self-governing territory southward into the oil fields dominated by the contested city of Kirkuk.
“Turkey worries that control over Kirkuk would give the Kurds access to the oil revenue which would allow them to finance an independent Kurdish state” and stir up separatist pressure among Kurds inside Turkey, said Stephen Larrabee, a policy specialist at the research group RAND Corp. in Washington.
Agreement on a policy for the Iraqi Kurds would revive U.S.-Turkish relations set back by the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Turkey opposed. Otherwise, the U.S. might lose the backing of a democratic Muslim ally it depends on for supplying Iraq and as a buffer with Iran.
“The Kurdish question is a huge future issue,” said retired Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, a former U.S. national security adviser and current board chairman of the American-Turkish Council, a Washington-based group that promotes relations between the nations. “It's a vital concern both for Iraq, for Turkey, for Iran and for Syria.”