The Islamic State (IS) genocidal invasion in 2014 of the Yazidi homeland in Sinjar, Iraq, and recent Turkish air attacks have deepened fissures in the Kurdish political map. Forces are playing two Kurdish segments against each other: the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which Turkey considers a terrorist group, and the Turkey-friendly Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The Yazidis are caught in the middle. Ethnically, Yazidis are Kurds, but for centuries their religion has set them apart and made them targets for persecution.

After the 2003 collapse of Saddam Hussein's Baath Regime in Iraq, the Yazidis faced the choice of joining the administrative boundaries of Kurdistan or seeking an autonomous entity for themselves. The KRG, which deployed its peshmerga in the disputed area after the 2003 US occupation, sees Sinjar as part of its territory. But in 2014, when 7,000 KRG peshmerga forces withdrew from Sinjar instead of battling IS — leaving the Yazidis to suffer massacres at the hands of IS — the PKK’s popularity saw a meteoric rise.

While peshmerga forces abandoned the fight, the PKK’s armed wing, the People's Defense Forces (HPG), fought to evacuate the Yazidis to the Sinjar Mountains. The Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) fought to open an evacuation corridor to save thousands of people from IS slaughter. Having lost its standing at Sinjar, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of Massoud Barzani and his KRG could not react to the PKK’s creation of the Yazidis' Sinjar Resistance Units (YBS) and the political and civil body, the Sinjar Constituent Assembly.

These developments became serious concerns for Turkey. Ankara felt that Sinjar was becoming a new Qandil, that a new access route was opening for Rojava — the area in northern Syria run by the Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party (PYD) — and that Iraq and Iran were encouraging a new force to challenge Turkey’s interests.