Tensions between Kurdish groups are making the fight against ISIS a lot more complicated

On July 24, Turkey deepened its participation in the campaign against ISIS by allowing the US to carry out airstrikes from its Incirlik Airbase. Turkey is also launching its own sorties against the jihadist militants.

But Recip Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's authoritarian-minded president, also used the strikes against ISIS as cover for a Machiavellian power-play.

Shortly after Turkey allowed the US to launch strikes from Incirlik, Ankara carried out a wave of airstrikes and arrests against members of the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist group originally inspired by Marxism that has been designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the US, and the EU for its attacks against both military and nonmilitary targets.

Turkey claims that the campaign against the PKK is part of a two-pronged fight against terrorism and was launched following the PKK's killing of two Turkish police officers. But Kurdish politicians in Turkey claim that the campaign is actually aimed at shoring up Erdogan's vise-grip on Turkish politics following his party's loss of its parliamentary majority after 13 years in power this past June.

Despite Ankara's ultimate intentions, the campaign against the PKK highlights the incredibly fractious, and at times hostile, relationship between the Kurds' various political groups and militias.

Turkey's moves are calculated at striking at the PKK while deepening the rift between Kurdish factions - something that could end up complicating or even harming the fight against ISIS.

Kurd vs. Kurd

So far, the Turkish military has bombed the PKK in their strongholds in the Qandil Mountains in northern Iraq.

On July 25, a day after Turkey began bombing the PKK in Iraq, President Massoud Barzani of Iraqi Kurdistan (the KRG) called Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and "expressed his displeasure with the dangerous level the situation has reached," according to Al Arabiya.

But Barzani quickly shifted his position and began blaming the PKK for the upsurge in violence and the breakdown of the peace process with Turkey.

"The PKK overestimated itself. The peace process between Turks and Kurds' being threatened is not only related to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but also to hardliners in the PKK who do not want peace," Barzani said in an interview with reporters from Germany-based Focus magazine on July 31.

Barzani's shift towards supporting Turkish action against the PKK reflects the fractious nature of Kurdish politics. Iraqi Kurdistan is ruled by Barzani's political party, the KDP. The KDP's leading Iraqi Kurdish political rival is the PUK, which is aligned with the PKK.

In 1996, this KDP-PUK rivalry devolved into a civil war that only ended after US-brokered peace talks. Despite a power-sharing arrangement that the two parties agreed to after the US invasion of Iraq, the KDP and the PUK remain distrustful of each other. The KDP also worries that its good relations with Turkey could be ruined if Iraqi Kurdistan becomes too much of a base of operations for the PKK in its attacks against Turkish targets.

This rivalry between the KDP on one side and the PKK and PUK on the other has limited the various Kurdish militias' ability to work together. Both sides control their own peshmerga militia, leading to difficulties coordinating missions between the two armed groups. In April, the PKK and the KDP exchanged frequent barbs over each other's alleged military ineffectiveness as the two sides competed for control of Sinjar, in northern Iraq, after forcing ISIS from the area.

Erdogan's power play

This political bickering ultimately plays into Turkey's hands.

Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is almost entirely dependent upon Turkey - without the Baghdad government sharing any income with the autonomous region, Kurdistan's major source of income is from its oil pipeline with Turkey. This arrangement forces Iraqi Kurdistan to bend to Turkey's outsized influence. Meanwhile, Turkey supports the KRG to undercut its mutual rivals in the PKK.

So the airstrikes in Iraq may have even been beneficial for both Turkey and the KRG.

"The KRG and PKK are not really de facto allies under the surface: They're rivals who share the same physical space and who are fighting the same enemy, ISIS," Michael Knights, an Iraq specialist with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told The National. "But in Syria, Sinjar and Qandil, the Barzanis and the PKK have an escalating rivalry. As a result, I don't think the KDP (Barzani's Kurdistan Democratic Party) is at all concerned that the PKK were struck by Turkey."

On August 1, the KRG called on the PKK to leave its bases in northern Iraq. The PKK "should withdraw its fighters from the Kurdish region so to ensure the civilians of Kurdistan don't become victims," Barzani said in a statement.

According to the AP, Barzani also called on Turkey and the PKK to restart the peace process while decrying Ankara's airstrikes amid reports that civilians were killed. The KRG also denounced the PKK for carrying out an attack on an oil pipeline last week that runs between the KRG and Turkey.

"Some 99 percent of the burden of these attacks is borne alone by the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and its people," the KRG's Ministry of Natural Resources said in a statement. "[The] People of Kurdistan will hold the thieves and saboteurs and those supporting them to account for all the hardships they cause."

Things get even more complicated in Syria and Iraq

For now, despite their rivalries, the various Kurdish entities are forced to make common cause against ISIS.

But now that Turkey is bombing the PKK it is foreseeable that the violence already engulfing the region could take on additional dimensions as divisions between Kudish factions deepen.

As the PKK and Turkey continue escalating and the Iraqi Kurdish leadership continues to side with Ankara, it is not inconceivable that the violence could spark an intra-Kurdish feud.

In that case, Turkey's leaders would face continued political unrest, potential ISIS attacks, PKK terrorist attacks in the east, and intra-Kurdish feuding in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan.

But it would have gained a free hand for taking on the PKK inside of both Turkey and Iraq. Turkey has gained more of an ability to go after the state's primary enemy - whatever the consequences for the fight against ISIS may be.