Issuing a strongly-worded speech, Mr Erdoğan said fighting the Iraqi Kurdish bid for independence was “a matter of survival”.
The Turkish leader also suggested he could cut off a pipeline that carries oil out of Iraq, to increase pressure on an autonomous Kurdish region.
Mr Erdoğan has long struggled against a Kurdish insurgency in southeast Turkey, which shares a border with northern Iraq.
Erdogan might not be wrong about Kurdistan representing a deadly threat — but perhaps not in the way he meant. PJM’s own David Goldman noted last year:
Iran and Turkey face a demographic train wreck that will hit with full force in about twenty years. Depending on the oil price, Iran will run out of money, young people or water first—but it will run out of all three in the foreseeable future. Turkey’s Kurdish minority has twice as many children as ethnic Turks, so that it will become a majority of military-age Turks within a generation. Saudi Arabia will run out of money in five years at the present oil price, and its tumescent welfare state (as I have argued previously) will collapse.
The chart below shows that the Kurdish regions of Turkey (especially the Southeast) have a total fertility rate of 2.8 to 3.4 births per female, while the Western provinces dominated by ethnic Turks have a TFR of only 1.6 to 1.8.
And historically, the notion that the Turks might indulge in a little genocide to rid themselves of a pesky minority isn’t all that far-fetched.