The instability that has swept over the Middle East over the past half-decade has its winners and its losers. For the most part, the much-beleaguered Kurds are to be numbered in the former camp. In Syria, the long-silent Kurdish minority now finds itself allied with U.S. air power and special forces, and controlling a large, de facto autonomous area in the country’s north. In Iraq, the Kurdish Regional Government is operating in what is increasingly an all-but-sovereign territory. In Turkey, things are moving in a less positive direction, but this hardly attests to Kurdish weakness or silence. The formidable Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) is once more engaged in insurgency against the government based in Ankara.
