Diplomatic Balancing Act

Less publicly, American officials in late 2007 began to support Turkish military action against Kurdish rebels in Turkey who have sought refuge in northern Iraq. Turkey still keeps as many as 1,500 troops here, officials say, and the cooperation has allowed them, as a senior American official put it, “to quite effectively strike” the Kurdish rebels.

Iraqi officials in Erbil and Baghdad have protested, requiring a measure of American diplomacy to soothe their resentment. But at least for now, Kurdish officials have viewed their alliance with Turkey as a greater priority in a region still contested by Iran.

“Kurdistan is not against the interests of Turkey,” Mr. Kirkuki said simply. A surprising feature of Turkey’s success is the image it has managed to project in Iraq. On the road from Erbil to Baghdad, its pop culture is everywhere.

Posters of Turkish television serials  from “Muhannad and Nour” to “Forbidden Love”  sell by the tens of thousands. The action series “Valley of the Wolves” is a sensation, the lead actor lending his name to cafes. His own posters are computer-altered to show him in traditional Kurdish or Arab dress  grist for a graduate school seminar on the adaptability of cultural symbols.

Its political influence in Baghdad is no less widespread. Unlike Iran and the United States, it has cultivated ties with virtually every bloc in the country, though relations with Mr. Maliki have proved difficult at times. (At one point, his officials tried to revoke the Turkish ambassador’s credentials to enter the Green Zone. “A misunderstanding,” Turkish diplomats called it.)

Turkish diplomats stay for two years, unlike the one-year posting for Americans, and over that time, they have managed to reach out to unlikely partners, namely the followers of the populist Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

Most of Mr. Sadr’s bloc of lawmakers traveled to the Turkish capital, Ankara, for training in parliamentary protocol. In October, Turks were the only diplomats to attend a commemoration the Sadrists held at Baghdad University. “It is not a group to be excluded,” one of them said.