MIDDLE EAST: Since Iraq's ethnically Kurdish president, Jalal Talabani, was taken to hospital in Jordan on Monday, good wishes have been flooding in from all over.
Not altogether unsurprisingly, the only neighbouring country not to send a get well card has been Turkey, whose Kurdish problem has materialised like an obstinate ghost at every major strategic turning point in its 83-year history.
From Ankara's perspective the single most important security issue to arise from the toppling of Saddam Hussein has been the growing autonomy of Iraq's Kurdish north.
A federal - worse, an independent - Iraqi Kurdistan, Ankara fears, not without reason, would have a knock-on effect on Turkey's large and discontented Kurdish minority.
This is the fear that lay behind top Turkish general Yasar Buyukanit's remarks in Washington earlier this month that Turkey was facing more threats to its national security than at any time in its modern history.
His outburst was the first shot of a broadside that appears to have scuppered feeble efforts by Turkey's elected government (backed by Washington) to begin discussions with Iraqi Kurdish leaders. Talks would primarily have been about what to do with 5,000 Turkish Kurdish separatists hiding out in northern Iraq's mountains.
Foreign minister Abdullah Gul was last week insisting Turkey should even talk to its enemies.
Yesterday he described Iraqi Kurdish leader Massud Barzani as an "irresponsible . . . adventurer". With Turkish troops lined up on the Iraqi border and Turkish newspapers discussing if Turkey should invade to prevent Kurds getting control of oil-rich Kirkuk, tensions are high.
A Turkish Kurdish leader was arrested last week for saying that Turkey's Kurds "would consider an attack on Kirkuk as an attack on" themselves.
Don't fall for the declamatory nature of Turkish politics, Turkish commentators say. Almost all of this foreign policy noise is actually part of a struggle for domestic control between the religious-minded government and secularists led by the army.
"They're like village kids throwing stones at each other," says Mehmet Ali Birand, a veteran political commentator.
Current prime minister Tayyip Erdogan is thinking of running in April's presidential elections. The army, deeply suspicious of him, is determined to stop him.
Columnist Cengiz Candar does not expect any change in the medium term. "Turkish policy- making has pretty much ground to a halt until parliamentary elections" this November, he thinks.
Former Clinton administration adviser Henry Barkey thinks Turkey's ideological rigidity over Iraq's Kurds is a great pity.
"An Iraq where Kirkuk is in Kurdish hands is in Turkey's interests," he says. It could act as a secular shield between Turkey and what looks increasingly likely to be a religious administration in the Shia-controlled south. It would be of huge economic benefit. Above all, "northern Iraq needs Turkey".