For people not familiar with the Kurds, they're a large, effectively stateless ethnic group that was arbitrarily split up after WWI and has been oppressed in both Iraq and Turkey ever since. The Kurds have always wanted independence in some form, but nobody is going to just give them a state. They exist as large percentages of the population of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. They make up between 18-25% of the population of Turkey, so when they threaten revolt, it's a pretty existential threat to the nation, hence Erdogan trying to wipe the Kurdish militia (and really, the entire ethnicity, including its language, dress, and even their name itself) off the map.