OK. This is odd. My new go-to site on Iraq, IraqS​log​ger​.com, is report­ing con­flict­ing “reports of a Turk­ish incur­sion into Iraqi Kurdistan/Northern Iraq”:http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3103 in hot pur­suit of PKK fight­ers.
AP has been report­ing that “thou­sands” of Turk­ish troops have crossed the bor­der, but var­i­ous offi­cials are deny­ing it.

Sev­eral thou­sand Turk­ish troops crossed into north­ern Iraq early Wednes­day to chase Kur­dish guer­ril­las who oper­ate from bases there, two “senior secu­rity offi­cials” told the AP.

“It is not a major offen­sive and the num­ber of troops is not in the tens of thou­sands,” one of the offi­cials, based in south­east Turkey, told The Asso­ci­ated Press by tele­phone. The offi­cials did not say where the Turk­ish force was oper­at­ing in north­ern Iraq, nor did he say how long they would be there.

The AP has scaled back its esti­mate, and now says “hun­dreds” of troops.
DEBKA (grain of salt required) says “50,000 Turk­ish troops have invaded.”:http://debka.com/headline.php?hid=4284 The Kurds, obvi­ously, are not pleased.

Mas­soud Barzani, had sent a per­sonal emis­sary, Safin Dizai, to Ankara with an urgent warn­ing. Turk­ish tanks would not be allowed to cross into north­ern Iraq, he said. The Kur­dish pesh­merga would repel them. “The peo­ple of Kur­dis­tan,” said the mes­sen­ger, “would not stand by as spec­ta­tors if Turk­ish tanks and panz­ers entered Kirkuk.”

Is this true? I can’t tell yet, but I’ve got some emails and calls out to friends in Kur­dis­tan and I’m wait­ing to hear. Will let you know if I can find out more.
In the mean­time, some thoughts on this: If this report is true — a big “if” at this point — it’s a marked esca­la­tion in the region, obvi­ously. As with most things in the Mid­dle East, there are many, many threads and few things are so clear-cut as many in the West would imag­ine them to be. (“If A hap­pens, then B must result.”)
But, with that caveat, if the Turks really have crossed with hun­dreds of troops or more, I believe it’s a response to the Kurds’ threats of pulling out of Iraq because of the oil law, rather than any pre­tense of chas­ing the PKK. It’s also likely tied up some­how with the cur­rent dis­pute between the mil­i­tary and ErdoÄŸan’s soft-Islamist gov­ern­ment in Ankara.
But could the US have approved this? If so, the only rea­son might be to per­suade the Kurds to buckle under to Iraq’s new oil law. How­ever, If the US agreed to this, they’re play­ing with fire. Like the Ira­ni­ans next door, who think they can care­fully stoke the civil war as a means of bog­ging down the US, the Amer­i­cans likely believe they can keep the Turks in check and the Kurds from attack­ing Turk­ish forces. But I know the pesh­merga, and they’re not going to take a few hun­dred Turk­ish sol­diers in a “secu­rity zone” lightly. It will get ugly and out of con­trol quickly.
* If the US didn’t agree to this, it’s a night­mare sce­nario. Who to ally with? Turkey as a NATO ally fight­ing ter­ror­ism? The Kurds, who are the only real suc­cess story in the Iraqi nar­ra­tive? If the US takes no side and instead diverts forces to the north to stand between the two sides, where will these troops come from? Bagh­dad? Anbar? What hap­pens when the US troops leave those areas?
* I expect another Kur­dish insur­gency in Turkey is in the works. We all know how well that worked out last time.
* I don’t think the Turk­ish gov­ern­ment will col­lapse or a mil­i­tary coup will result. I think instead, the Turk­ish pop­u­la­tion will rally around what­ever action the Turks take and the gov­ern­ment led by ErdoÄŸan will fol­low the lead and lend its full-throated sup­port.
*UPDATE June 7, 11:03:44 AM +0200 GMT:* Spencer at TPM­muck­racker doesn’t buy it, and blames DEBKAfile, which is fair enough. But AP is still stick­ing to its, er, guns and now char­ac­ter­izes the oper­a­tion as “hun­dreds” of Turk­ish troops in “raids.” Curi­ouser and curi­ouser.
So many impli­ca­tions. And so lit­tle infor­ma­tion.
Also, dona­tions are work­ing again, and cov­er­ing this place ain’t cheap. Fix­ers, rented cars, hotel rooms, etc. all cost money and free­lanc­ing for news­pa­pers only cov­ers part of it. If you’d like me to keep blog­ging the devel­op­ments in Lebanon’s lat­est cri­sis, please con­sider drop­ping some coin in the donate link below and to the right. Thanks.