Today’s WaPo story on the tense situation between Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan regarding the PKK included this:

Kirkuk residents are to vote by the end of this year on whether to annex the city to Iraq’s Kurdish north. Many Turks object to the annexation, in part out of concern for the fate of Kirkuk’s Turkmen population.

This isn’t new, of course, but it’s just occurred to me to ask: Why do the Turks get to rule millions of Kurds and claim a moral right to use force to suppress their national ambitions, whereas it’s somehow outrageous that the Iraqi Kurds should rule a few hundred thousand Turkmen? Unlike the PKK issue, where Turkey and Kurdistan have some overlapping interests, the status of Kirkuk is a circle that can’t be squared — either the Kurds win or the Turks win. Either way, it’s going to blow up in our faces.