High in the Kandil Mountains separating Iraq from Iran, a German physician has become a beacon of hope for ailing Kurds across the region. On a sunny autumn afternoon, scores of women, young and old, squatted in a small clinic awaiting their turn for a free examination by the doctor, who goes by the code name of “Medya.”

"I can’t have children; it's my hormones," whispered Dilwaz Aziz, 20-something newlywed, stroking a hirsute upper lip. "I know Dr. Medya will help me."

But “Dr. Medya” is no ordinary do-gooder. She is a full-fledged member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The rebel group has fought on and off for Kurdish self-rule inside Turkey since 1994. With its Syrian affiliate, the Democratic Union Party (PYD), it is leading the battle against the Islamic State (IS) in Iraq and Syria. Long before starry-eyed Westerners and assorted war junkies joined the Kurds' fight against the jihadists, the general practitioner from Hamburg (Medya identified herself as "nurse" in a 2013 interview) dropped a promising career to join the guerrillas in 1993.

The brusquely amicable doctor told Al-Monitor that she discovered the Kurds in the late 1980s at the height of the conflict between Turkish security forces and the PKK. She said, “I had many Kurdish friends in Hamburg and decided to go to Kurdistan [southeast Turkey] in 1990. When I returned two years later, I saw that many of the villages I visited had been burned to ashes.”