In early July, Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz traveled to Tehran to participate in the funeral of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, where he was greeted warmly by senior Iranian government officials and later hosted for formal talks by newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Behind the public diplomatic courtesy, a critical behind-the-scenes security collaboration between the two regional powers was revealed to independent news outlet Middle East Eye by multiple anonymous sources familiar with the closed-door discussions. \n\nAccording to the sources, Pezeshkian expressed explicit gratitude to the Turkish delegation for its role in derailing a covert Israeli plan led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to incite an armed uprising by Kurdish opposition groups in western Iran. Senior Turkish officials had launched intensive diplomatic outreach to their U.S. counterparts to argue that the Israeli proposal was not only unworkable but also posed a direct threat to Turkey’s core national security interests. Multiple sources familiar with the exchanges note that former U.S. President Donald Trump had previously hinted on multiple occasions that Ankara was even prepared to take military action to stop the creation of a new Kurdish separatist entity along its southern border, a response shaped by Turkey’s past security experiences stemming from the civil war in neighboring Syria. \n\nBeyond blocking the Israeli initiative, Turkey also delivered a clear diplomatic message to Iranian leadership during the talks: avoid sustained large-scale military operations against Kurdish groups positioned in the cross-border regions of Iran and northern Iraq. Turkish policymakers warn that if Iran continues its crackdown after the failure of the Israeli-backed insurgency plot, displaced and embattled Kurdish factions will have little choice but to deepen alliances with Israel and Western powers, a outcome that runs directly counter to Ankara’s current security priorities. \n\nCrucially, Turkey is currently navigating a fragile peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a group designated as a terrorist organization by Ankara, the EU, and the United States. The Turkish government is set to introduce landmark draft legislation to parliament this coming Monday that would create a legal pathway for former PKK militants to return to Turkey within a six-month window. The proposed partial pardon would open a path to social reintegration for non-violent PKK cadres, making regional stability a non-negotiable requirement for the peace process to move forward. Any escalation of Iranian military action in northern Iraq, where the PKK maintains long-standing rear bases, risks unraveling the delicate negotiating track. \n\nTurkish diplomatic lobbying of Washington proved surprisingly effective, sources confirm, because senior Trump administration officials were already deeply skeptical of Netanyahu’s regime-change gambit, particularly the claim that Kurdish forces could successfully execute a ground incursion into central Iran. Multiple U.S. officials privately dismissed the plan as deeply flawed: the CIA director reportedly described Netanyahu’s regime-change scenarios as “farcical”, a characterization that Secretary of State Marco Rubio echoed in blunter terms to aides, calling it “bullshit”. \n\nEarlier this year, when U.S. officials working with Israeli intelligence agency Mossad and the CIA approached Iraqi Kurdish leaders to invite them to join the proposed anti-Tehran uprising, the proposal left Kurdish leadership caught between competing interests. The plan called for the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), the Iranian affiliate of Iraq’s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), to lead the insurgency, and also demanded that Peshmerga forces from Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) join the campaign, as U.S. officials doubted the PDKI had the military capacity to pull off the operation on its own. But Erbil rejected the proposal. \n\nThe reluctance of Iraqi Kurdish leaders to sign on stemmed from lingering distrust of Washington, after the U.S. abandoned Kurdish militias in northern Syria earlier this year in a policy shift to accommodate the new Damascus government. With no guarantee of sustained U.S. support, Kurdish leaders had little incentive to take up arms against Iran. \n\nMehmet Alaca, a leading Turkish scholar focused on Iraqi politics and security, explained that escalating Iranian military pressure on Kurdish opposition groups would backfire for all regional actors. “Increased Iranian military pressure could inadvertently push Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, such as the PDKI, Komala and the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), closer to the West, particularly Israel,” Alaca told Middle East Eye. “The Kurdistan Region of Iraq, which has hosted these groups for many years, would bear the greatest cost of such a development. Besides risking the transformation of the region into a new front in the Iran-Israel rivalry, this scenario could make the balance between the KDP and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) [in Iraq], the party led by the Talabani family, even more fragile. It could also provide Tehran with a justification for further expanding its influence in the region on security grounds.” \n\nIran has launched repeated airstrikes against PDKI bases in northern Iraq since escalating operations against Kurdish opposition groups in late February. To mitigate the risk of escalating instability, Alaca notes that Turkey has actively pursued diplomatic outreach to the PUK, a traditionally Iran-aligned Iraqi Kurdish party that normalized official relations with Ankara during a high-level visit to Turkey earlier this month. Currently, both the KDP and PUK – despite their long-standing internal rivalry – have agreed on a shared position that Iranian Kurdish opposition groups should not be drawn into the broader conflict between Iran and Israel. \n\nFor Turkey, Alaca emphasized, the entire dynamic revolves around its long-term domestic and regional security goals. “For Turkey, the most critical dimension is the peace process and the new security architecture it is seeking to build for the post-PKK era. The extension of the Iran-Israel rivalry into Iraqi Kurdistan and the re-emergence of the Kurdish card at the centre of the regional power struggle would directly undermine Turkey’s long-term security calculations.”’