ANKARA/BAGHDAD, May 13 - Just two weeks after Turkey's parliament made recommendations on how to advance the country's peace process with Kurdish militants, the Iran war broke out, plunging the Middle East into fresh instability and bringing new doubts on both sides.

Turkey has warned of the risk of new Kurdish mobilisations in Iran and Iraq and, according to a government official, played a key role in quashing a short-lived U.S.-Israeli idea to back a Kurdish militant ground invasion of Iran from Iraq.

Since then, Ankara and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have dug in to watch the fallout of the war, each refusing to move next and stalling efforts to end the four-decade conflict, according to interviews with Turkish officials, lawmakers, and representatives of the northern Iraq-based PKK.

For now, both President Tayyip Erdogan's government and the militant group are unwilling to take bold steps - especially with the region destabilised, the interviews show.

The government appears reluctant to enact legislative reforms including a potential amnesty for former PKK fighters, and to give the group's jailed leader an official role in the peace process. Ankara says the PKK must fully disarm first.

The PKK, which announced its dissolution last year, says doing so would leave it exposed, so legislation must come first. Senior PKK officer Murat Karayilan was quoted as telling the PKK-linked Firat News Agency that it would be "irrational" to lay down arms without Turkish legal guarantees at a time that war "drones and missiles are flying overhead".

WAITING FOR DEMOCRATIC REFORMS

Erdogan says the peace process will carry on. But some stakeholders are frustrated that no legislative steps have been taken three months after a parliamentary commission urged reforms.

"It is unequivocal that there is a pause, but not a complete halt," said Gulistan Kilic Kocyigit, a senior lawmaker from the pro-Kurdish DEM Party.

The government's demand for a full disarmament now is "unrealistic" and it has given no c...