Friction between Turkey, US ahead of Trump-Erdoğan meet

It has been revealed that both the American and the Russian military attachés were called to Turkish military headquarters in Ankara a short while before Turkish jets hit outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) positions on Sinjar Mountain in northern Iraq and northern Syria at 2 a.m. on April 25.

But both countries, Turkey's NATO ally Washington and NATO rival Moscow, strongly criticized the action.

The Turkish government has a point in hitting the PKK in Sinjar: it is the geographical link between the PKK headquarters in the Kandil mountains in Iraq, next to Turkish and Iranian borders and PKK strongholds in Syria, called Rojava. If the PKK holds Sinjar as well, it will be seen by Ankara as a huge step forward for a territorial continuum for a Kurdish region under the control of the PKK, which is an organization designated as "terrorists" by the U.S. as well. Such a geographical corridor will cut Turkey's links with the rest of Iraq and also the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) of Iraq.

Ankara sent condolences to the KRG because five Peshmerga soldiers were killed in an air strike "by mistake," but the KRG is known to be uncomfortable because of the PKK's domination in and around Sinjar. The U.S. had earlier said it was against the PKK domination in Sinjar, seconding the KRG concerns.

Then why did the U.S. condemn the Turkish action? The answer was given in a Twitter message by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). The tweet said, "Our partner forces have been killed by Turkey strike, they have made many sacrifices to defeat ISIS."

Is the PKK a partner of the U.S. in its fight against the outlawed Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL)? On paper, no, it isn't. But the PKK's Syria branch, the Democratic Union Party (PYD...