Al-Jazeera reports that Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the PKK, is going to propose a "road map" for peace between the Kurds and the Turkish government -- and that Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to pursue reforms.
Color me a little skeptical about "road maps for peace," but I'm encouraged by one line in the Al-Jazeera piece: "The Turkish military knows it cannot achieve peace by continuing the conflict," said Anita McNaught, Al-Jazeera's reporter.
Meghan O'Sullivan, a former senior adviser on Iraq in the Bush administration, has an op-ed in today's Washington Post. O'Sullivan's basic argument is that Iraq is dealing with "issues-based" problems, not sectarian conflict.
But the reality is that Iraq's most difficult problems are primarily about substantive issues. Iraqis and their leaders are divided on fundamental questions about the nature of the state -- specifically, whether the locus of power should be in Baghdad or in the provinces. Should Iraq be a more traditional Arab state, where power is centralized in the capital? Or should the regions and the provinces -- i.e., the KRG -- have substantial authorities and autonomy?
This is pretty muddled thinking -- probably what I should expect from one of Bush's Iraq advisers, right?
The New York Times reports that the Kurds in Iraq have approved a constitution (two weeks ago) that lays claim to the disputed and oil-rich Al-Ta'mim province (home to Kirkuk). This basically stomps right through quiet negotiations that had apparently started recently between Kurdish and Iraqi lawmakers, organized by the United Nations and United States.
