Iraq:Iraq's foreign minister yesterday played down fears that Turkey might invade northern Iraq while stressing that his government was "not comfortable" with a vote in Ankara's parliament on Wednesday giving its military the green light to hunt members of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq.
Meanwhile, a constitutional referendum that had been expected to plunge Turkey into political crisis will go ahead as planned on Sunday, amid general indifference.
The referendum has been overshadowed by what the Turkish commentator Fehmi Koru calls "an undeclared war on two fronts" against a scheduled US Congressional Bill recognising the slaughter of Armenians during the first World War as genocide, and against the Kurdish separatist guerrillas of the PKK.
There is scepticism here, however, about Turkish military intentions. The vote in the parliament to authorise a military incursion was as much a challenge to the US and Iraq to combat the presence of the PKK in northern Iraq as it was a Turkish statement of intent.
"If something happens, it is possibly going to be air strikes on some suspected PKK positions," Iraq's foreign minister Hoshiyar Zebari suggested yesterday.
"But to talk about a major military offensive and major cross-border incursion, that I do not expect."
He said Baghdad saw further dialogue with Ankara as the only way to resolve the festering PKK problem. "Our formal request is that they leave Iraqi soil and leave Iraq for its people and do not bring us more problems than we're already suffering," Mr Zebari said, adding that the PKK should leave "as soon as possible". Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is thought unlikely to act until or unless another PKK attack forces him to do so.
Thousands of people took to the streets in several northern Iraqi towns to protest against the Turkish vote. Carrying banners with slogans in English, Kurdish, Turkish and Arabic, the marchers called for peaceful dialogue with their northern neighbour to end the crisis, but vowed to resist any military invasion.
Back in June Mr Erdogan's neo-Islamist AKP party put together the package of institutional reforms that are to be voted on on Sunday, to call the military's bluff after it prevented Abdullah Gul, one of the founders of the AKP, being elected president of Turkey in April. The key article said that the 11th president of Turkey would be elected by universal suffrage. Turkey's 10th president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, scheduled the October 21st referendum.
Mr Erdogan has said he wants to establish a "culture of referendums" in Turkey. A far more controversial referendum on a new constitution which would, among other proposals, allow veiled women to attend university, should take place early next year.
The October 21st referendum has been a complete muddle. A general election in July gave the AKP 341 of 550 seats in parliament, and in August the assembly elected Mr Gul as president under the old system. Until last week, no one knew whether Mr Gul would have to step down if the referendum passed and campaign for election by popular vote, or whether he would serve his seven-year term.
The military and opposition pressed for an immediate presidential election if the referendum passed. It was a surprising demand, since Mr Gul would doubtless have been re-elected by a wide margin. In the event, the government decided to remove the words "11th president" from the ballot. If the referendum passes, the 12th president will be elected by popular vote in 2014.
With Mr Gul's stay in the Cankaya presidential palace assured, there is now little at stake in Sunday's referendum. It would shorten the period between general elections from five to four years, and change the president's term from seven to five years, with a limit on two terms in office.