For more than two decades we have been struggling to establish close relations between Turkey and Iraqi Kurds. In some parts of the 1990s this was achieved with Masoud Barzani providing peshmerga forces to help Turkey's struggle against the PKK in the Qandil Mountains of northern Iraq. Later relations soured and were very bumpy, especially in the first half of the 2000s. Then things gradually got better, so much so that Barzani even attended the convention of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).Turkey has gone out of its way to help Barzani's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), of which he is president, and Kurds in general so much so that Ankara did not only permit the passage of KRG peshmerga forces to northern Syria via Turkey to fight the religious extremists of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) trying to capture the city of Kobani, but also provided them with logistical support. Turkey also helped Barzani when the religious extremists were threatening Irbil after capturing Mosul.However, in recent days there has been disturbing developments that have raised eyebrows in Ankara. Kurdish officials have reported that they have agreed with the United States to convert parts of the Irbil airport for military use and host an American base there that will be used to fly bombers against the religious fanatics of ISIS in Iraq and in Syria. As a person who has lived in Irbil before for long years when the airport was being built by a Turkish company, we knew even in those days that the Americans had an eye on the Irbil airport, and thus Kurds were building long runways and other facilities that had military connotations.This of course is a slap in the face for Turkey and should not be tolerated. Barzani is free to do whatever he wishes, yet he has to properly calculate the consequences. The U.S. has been pressuring Turkey to allow the use of the İncirlik Air Base in Adana for sorties on ISIS targets in Iraq and Syria. Turkey has rejected this demanding that the U.S. first come up with a plausible plan to finish off the regime of President Bashar Assad in Syria and that the fight against ISIS should be a part of the grand plan on Syria. It is clear that the Americans are not interested in finishing off the Assad regime. So Assad continues to destroy the country and kill civilians while the Americans prefer to bomb ISIS targets.So now when Turkey pushes the Americans into a corner it seems Barzani is out to save the U.S. from that corner. Moreover, it is clear that such acts also continue to fuel the crisis in Syria, and the longer the crisis continues the longer the element of instability rules the region. More than 1.5 million refugees continue to stay in Turkey simply because they cannot go back home where chaos and conflict is the order of the day.Barzani cannot create stability out of all this and will only contribute to deepening the woes in Syria as well as Iraq.Barzani also has to remember that when he was unable to sell the oil extracted from his region and was desperate for funds because the central government in Baghdad was simply denying monthly budgetary funds to the KRG, it was Turkey that came to his rescue allowing the sale of oil through its borders and it was an American court in Texas that ruled against the sale of that oil in the U.S.So at the end of the day Barzani has to see that while the U.S. may be his real big brother, he cannot survive in this region by antagonizing Ankara. Trying to create a Kurdish alternative to İncirlik is not such a friendly act.Wait one minute.Russian President Vladimir Putin presented a Kalashnikov to Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, which created much controversy. We do not understand why people were so upset. The present was very appropriate as Putin also knows that Sissi is a military leader and is not a sophisticated, intellectual head of state that would deserve a golden pen.