On Friday peshmerga (Kurdish fighters) seized two nearby oilfields, Kirkuk and Bai Hassan, turfing out Arab workers and replacing them with their own staff.
Mossad operatives were in northern Iraq training Kurdish fighters for the battles with Saddam Hussein's Iraq, until the Shah pulled the plug, ending support for the Kurdish rebellion with his 1975 Algiers agreement with Saddam.
A landmark in this targeting of media independence was reached with the blackout implemented by the media itself on the story of 34 Kurdish villagers killed by Turkish fighter jets in the Iraqi border village of Uludere/Roboski in late 2011.
But concerns about a slowing economy, jobs, civil rights and a lack of progress in the Kurdish peace process appear to have combined with worries that Erdoğan could assume quasi-dictatorial powers to thwart the president's ambitions.
"The Kurdish president has made it very clear to western allies that he doesn't need their boys and girls on the ground.
"Why should we differentiate?" Isis fighters are closing in on the centre of besieged Kobani, where the Kurdish militia have sworn that they will fight to the death, and hundreds of desperate civilians are trapped in streets rank with the smell of rotting bodies.
On one side were Kurdish fighters, dug in behind a series of ramparts and trenches reminiscent of the first world war.
The Kurdish security agency Asayish says the situation inside Kirkuk is now "relatively calm".
In a polling station in the predominantly Kurdish suburb of Dolapdere in Istanbul, Hacer Dinler, 25, said that she had high hopes for the HDP.
A 28-year-old Kurdish estate agent in Dalston said: "I don't think anybody considered just sitting in and watching while your business was getting burned down.
The Arizona Republican urged a "fundamental re-evaluation" of US strategy on Sunday, as the extremist group, which is the target of US-led international air strikes, continued to advance into the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria, near the border with Turkey, and towards the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.
