Are Russia and the US giving a green light to an independent Kurdish state?

Immediately after his return from the United States, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held a key security meeting and then chaired the cabinet in order to announce Turkey's counter-measures against the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government's (KRG) bid to vote for independence on Sept. 25. 

Before these meetings, Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım once again called on KRG President Massoud Barzani to cancel the referendum in order to avoid more tension in the already unstable Middle East. He also repeated that Ankara considers breaking up the territorial integrity of Iraq a matter of national security and will therefore use all of its rights to stop it.  

Turkey's efforts to stop the referendum have intensified over the past week and had two major legs: First, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) launched a military drill along the Iraqi border and issued a strong message to Barzani, hinting that insisting on the referendum would have a military response. 

Second, President Erdoğan and Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu engaged in hectic diplomacy in New York, where they attended the U.N. General Assembly, in order to mobilize the international community against the Iraqi Kurdish independence bid. The Turkish, Iranian and Iraqi foreign ministers issued a joint declaration against the referendum, declaring that they agreed to take counter-measures in coordination. 

The third move will be announcing sanctions that Turkey will impose against the KRG in the event that Barzani does not take a step back. The Sept. 23 vote at parliament for a mandate to be given to the government to deploy troops to Iraq and Syria should also be considered under this title. 

All these efforts aim to persuade Barzani that life will be much harder for him and his...