By Bridget Johnson, your guide to Journalism

Further fanning fears of instability in northern Iraq, Turkish forces pushed across the border in a long-anticipated offensive against Kurdish separatists, the Marxist-oriented Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

There’s no love lost in the U.S. for the Kurdish rebels — the PKK is branded a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU — nor is there much sympathy in the Iraqi government, which would like to see a breakaway state about as much as Turkey would. But northern Iraq is relatively peaceful as far as al-Qaida and other terrorist activity, with frenzied development of condos to cineplexes happening in Iraqi Kurdish cities such as Irbil. Will Turkey inflame Iraq by crossing into its territory to rout an estimated 4,000 PKK fighters?

Whereas Turkish TV claimed 3,000 to 10,000 (the number cited by Al-Jazeera) troops crossed the border, the Iraqi government claimed the offensive consisted of just a few hundred troops. The U.S. says it received advance notice of the incursion:

“‘This is something that we were aware of in advance and as you know the U.S. agrees with Turkey that the PKK is a terrorist organization and is an enemy of Turkey, Iraq and the United States,’ White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters.


…’We were notified and we urged the Turkish government to limit their operations to precise targeting of the PKK, to limit the scope and duration of their operations,’ Stanzel said.


‘We urged them to work directly also with the Iraqis, including Kurdish government officials, in determining how best to address the threat of the PKK,’ he added. ‘I understand that Turkish authorities had notified Iraqi authorities simultaneously.’”

Now if the U.S. helped plan the operation, that would definitely ruffle feathers with Baghdad. But the U.S. has just this far offered intelligence help while urging precise targeting of the PKK with as little collateral damage as possible.

Perhaps the greatest nervous reaction to Turkey’s guerrilla hunt was seen in oil markets, where prices rose Friday after receding Thursday from a record high of $101.32 a barrel.

(Photo by Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images)