Turkey signed a landmark security cooperation deal with Iraq on Aug. 16 — principally, as Ankara sees things, against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). A day earlier, the PKK marked the 40th anniversary of the launch of its armed campaign against the Turkish state.

Much has changed since the left-leaning group founded by Abdullah Ocalan, a university dropout from the southeastern province of Urfa known to his followers as “Apo,” carried out its first operation against a Turkish gendarmerie post in the southeastern province of Siirt.

The PKK originally set out to carve an independent Kurdish state from Turkey, Iran,........

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