One of the greatest effects of Syrian developments on Turkish public opinion has been to show that the Kurdish problem, which is the number-one item on the country’s agenda, has dimensions beyond being an internal problem of Turkey. Especially when some Kurdish settlements in Syria along the Turkish border were quickly abandoned in summer 2012 to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) by the Assad regime, the government and Turkish public realized the probability of the emergence of a second Kurdish entity south of Turkey's borders, in addition to the one in Iraq.
The example for Syrian Kurds to emulate was that in Iraq following the collapse of the central Arab nationalist regime. They would go the way of Iraqi Kurds and demand a federal Syria. Since the location and topography of “Syrian Kurdistan” and the number and density of Kurds was different from Iraqi Kurdistan, they would ask for a self-rule in the shape of “autonomy,” if not a federation. But they couldn’t return to their former life.