In a public address delivered in Ankara on Wednesday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has publicly commended Iraqi Kurdish authorities for their deliberate decision to steer clear of participation in the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran. The Turkish leader highlighted that the refusal of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to allow their sovereign territory to be utilized as a staging ground for strikes against neighboring Iran played a critical role in de-escalating broader regional tensions. Erdogan emphasized that this responsible choice prevented a cycle of violence that would have directly threatened the safety and stability of Kurdish communities across the region. “Greater strife that could have harmed our Kurdish brothers and sisters has been prevented,” he stated, adding that in the coming months, it will become increasingly evident how dangerous a coordinated plot the regional actors — including Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and Iranians — managed to foil together. This praise from Erdogan comes after months of sustained regional tensions, during which Kurdish leadership consistently distanced itself from the US-Israeli offensive, repeatedly warning that any form of involvement would drag the already volatile Iraqi Kurdish region into widespread chaos. This stance was maintained even amid a steady stream of cross-border attacks targeting Kurdish positions carried out by Iran and Iran-aligned Iraqi armed factions. The sequence of events dates back to early March, just days after the US and Israel formally launched their military campaign against Iran. At that time, former US President Donald Trump told news agency Reuters that he would openly support Kurdish forces launching a ground offensive against the Iranian government. Trump’s announcement coincided with widespread media reports claiming the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was secretly supplying weapons to Kurdish factions to aid in such an offensive. Weeks later, in an interview with Middle East Eye, a top Iraqi Kurdish military commander Sirwan Barzani pushed back against these Western media narratives, denying outright that Iraqi Kurdish forces were facilitating Iranian Kurdish opposition fighters crossing the shared border to launch attacks inside Iran. Barzani made clear that despite frustration over the hundreds of Iranian strikes on Iraqi Kurdish military outposts, his forces have no intention of launching any incursion into Iranian territory. Multiple leaders of Iranian Kurdish political parties have also issued public denials to Middle East Eye, rejecting claims that they have received US-supplied weapons through Iraqi Kurdish intermediaries, following Trump’s assertion that Washington was funneling arms to Iranian anti-government protesters via Kurdish groups. For decades, Turkey has viewed independent armed Kurdish movements across the Middle East as a core national security threat, and has repeatedly issued stern warnings against foreign attempts to mobilize Kurdish factions in regional conflicts to advance geopolitical goals. Ankara has long prioritized maintaining regional stability along its southern borders and has consistently opposed any actions that could expand the scope of the Iran conflict to neighboring states.