The Kurdish militias in northern Syria, which sought to stay out of the civil war while preparing their own autonomous enclave should Bashar al-Assad’s regime be toppled, are now being drawn into the fighting; the Iraqi Kurds, who have been training their Syrian kin, may well follow. Turkey inevitably views Kurdish activism in northern Syria – led by the Democratic Union party, an offshoot of the insurgent Kurdistan Workers Party in Turkey – as a direct threat to its stability, and will do its utmost to prevent it from sparking rebellion among Turkey’s own restive Kurdish minority.
叙利亚北部的库尔德人武装——他们在内战中寻求中立，但若巴沙尔政权被推翻，他们也准备建立自己的自治领地——正在被吸引加入战团；伊拉克库尔德人——他们一直在为叙利亚同胞提供训练——极有可能会步其后尘。土耳其难免将叙利亚北部的库尔德激进主义——以土耳其起义党库尔德工人党分支民主联盟党为首——视为其国家稳定的直接威胁，并将竭尽全力遏制它，以免激发土耳其本国难以驾驭的少数派库尔德人揭竿起义。