US-Turkey collision course

Citing the lyrics of a popular Turkish love song, President Tayyip Erdoğan said on April 30 before departing for India that Turkey could "come overnight, all of a sudden without warning." He was referring to operations against the positions of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iraq and of the People's Protection Units (YPG) positions in Syria, (the YPG being the Syrian extension of the PKK).

The song has a history for Turkish military. Prior to the Greek military coup and the Turkish military's intervention in Cyprus in 1974, the Turkish service of Greek Cypriot public radio often played a love song titled "I Long For You But You Don't Come." The Turkish Cypriot radio, named "The Flag," under similar manipulation by the military, played the song "I Could Come Any Night, All of a Sudden" in reply.

Since then, the song is often referred to in order to describe a surprise move taken as a result of a provocation in Turkish political history.

Erdoğan cited the song after photos appeared in the international media showing a YPG militant side by side with an American soldier, under a U.S. flag, watching the Turkish border with concerned expressions. The border they were watching was a border of a NATO member country - not a border of Russia, Iran, or North Korea, for example - and the Pentagon said they were there to monitor whether rockets were fired from YPG positions in Syria to Turkish territory, triggering retaliatory Turkish attacks on the YPG.

Odd, isn't it? Especially when Russia is calling on the U.S. to take immediate joint action against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or DAESH. 

Friction between Turkey and the U.S. over cooperating with the YPG and its political entity - the Democratic...