In the Ottoman Empire, what is now the state of Iraq consisted of four distinct Ottoman provinces. Kurdistan was one of them. When the boundaries of the present Arab nation states were drawn in 1920, most of Kurdistan ended up in Iraq, even though Kurds are ethnically different from Arabs, have their own distinct language and culture, and believe in a more moderate version of Islam. Their women, for instance, go unveiled and enjoy a relatively high degree of equality. Significant Kurdish minorities also exist in Syria, Iran, and Turkey.
Ever since Kurdistan was rudely overlooked by Britain and France in 1920, Kurds wanted their own homeland. There has been a Kurdish independence movement in all four countries, Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey, and Kurdish independence fighters were regarded as rebels or terrorists in all of those. Only the Iraqi Kurds were given regional autonomy after the Iraq-American war.
The Iraqi Kurds are now the only serious resistance against the spread of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. In Iraq they enjoy regional autonomy, but in Iran, Turkey, and Syria they are still regarded as rebels and/or terrorists. Although Germany and some other European countries, along with Canada, have pledged to supply the Iraqui Kurds, supplies have a hard time making it through Turkey to Iraq or Syria because Turkey regards Kurds as terrorists and enemies of the Turkish state. Turkey is afraid, and rightly so, that well armed Iraqi Kurds, after they have defeated ISIS, will invade Turkish Kurdistan and make it part of their Kurdish homeland.
The mess that is Syria/Iraq can only be resolved by international cooperation. All players need to sit down at the negotiating table and negotiate in earnest.
Difficult, but not impossible.