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.