“We could arrive suddenly one night” was the common front-page headline in several Turkish newspapers Sept. 26. In a chorus, the papers were trumpeting the warning of military action that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had issued to the Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) the day before over its independence referendum. The Turkish army had already launched maneuvers near the Habur border crossing with the KRG, involving armor and mechanized units backed by T-129 attack helicopters from the air.

The ongoing maneuvers have since grown into a full-fledged military exercise, with Iraqi counterterrorism teams joining the third phase Sept. 26, marking the first joint military drills between the two countries in years. Is the military flurry on the ground a harbinger of a looming Turkish military operation into northern Iraq?

The question pops up at the time when the Turkish media has been abuzz with the prospect of a large-scale military operation into Afrin, the Kurdish-controlled area across Turkey’s border with Syria, some 500 kilometers (310 miles) to the west of Habur. The Turkish military has been moving tanks and armored vehicles from the country’s northwest to the border province of Kilis, which faces Afrin, as well as to Hatay, which lies to the west of Afrin. Ankara sees the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which control Afrin, as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the armed group that has fought Ankara for more than three decades and is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and much of the international community. The pro-government daily Yeni Safak has even claimed that 25,000 Turkish troops will enter Syria from Hatay’s Yayladagi and Reyhanli districts in early October and go at least 35 kilometers (22 miles) into Idlib.

According to the Turkish media, an operation targeting Afrin may be imminent. Could Turkey attempt a corps-level operation similar to its Operation Euphrates Shield?