The Independent:

In central Istanbul on Monday, gangs of nationalist youths threw stones at windows in the mainly Kurdish district of Tarlabasi. In the southern town of Osmaniye on Tuesday, a couple armed with a shotgun blocked motorway traffic and told drivers to shout “down with the PKK”. They did so, and applauded the couple when police came to arrest them.

A columnist for the Milliyet newspaper, Ece Temelkuran, said that in a country like Turkey, officials are not doing enough to calm nerves. “Anger and hatred are as deep and vigorous today as they have perhaps ever been in Turkey’s history,” she wrote. “The end of this road could be Bosnia.”

*see Europe’s Terror Problem: PKK Fronts Inside the EU.

I have no idea what’s going to happen, but it was only a matter of time before hypocritical US support of PJAK was going to cause serious geopolitical blowback–especially with increasingly vocal nationalist sentiment within Turkey and an ever-more assertive Kurdish state at its borders.

It’s one thing to act as if the public (and media) is stupid, or that strategic competitors like Iran (teh evul enemy du jour!) are, like, totally crazy and thus could neva eva diplomatically outmaneuver the US; but it scares the fuck out of me to be constantly reminded that there’s still an influential block within the US gov’t that actually appears to believe its own bullshit with regards to foreign policy.

Talk about living the gimmick.

All that said, biji Kurdistan. Fuck the fascist ultranationalists in Ankara; there’s still enough Trot in me to naturally feel solidarity with a legitimate liberation/resistance movement.

Still, despite broad Kurdish support for the AKP, I doubt that everyone’s favourite neoliberal Islamist government will be able to resist burgeoning Turkish nationalism if it wishes to survive its mandate–especially with the Gray Wolves howling again. Even nominal liberals are breaking out the red and white en masse.

Great coverage of the issue. Better than anything I’ve read in the MSM. Indeed, in the MSM you’re lucky if you hear of Barzani or Ocalan and forget about a discussion of the goofball distinction being drawn between PKK and PJAK.