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

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.