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I don't think you need to give them parts of Turkey or Iran (though most of them live there). Iraq and Syria are in very weak positions right now to resist partition. This would give all Kurds a homeland, even if they don't live there. Sort of like Israel is for Jews.

There is a real power vacuum there right now, which is why ISIL occupies much of this land. Officially giving it to the Kurds would rapidly lead to ISIL being expelled.

My “humor” aside i have long thought the Kurds should have their own country. And now is as good a time as any. Perhaps the best time of all due to the things you mentioned.

A slice of “Syria” and “Iraq”. Why would either miss it at this point? Neither Syria or Iraq will ever be single functioning countries again. How to handle the oil wells in the Kirkuk area would be a major stumbling block however. I don’t think the Shia’s currently running the country formerly known as Iraq would be trusting of the mostly Sunni Kurds sharing the oil revenues from those wells.

The Kurds should get land from the four countries I mentioned. But perhaps just land from the two you mentioned would be sufficient......... For now.

There are about 41 billion barrels of oil under Iraq. If you gave everything north of Tikrit to the Kurds, they would get about 1.7 billion barrels of oil in the deal. Almost all the oil in Iraq is in the southeast, near Kuwait. Even if you gave them the oil fields southeast of Tikrit, that would only bump them up to about 2 billion barrels.

2 billion out of 41 billion? The oil is not a big issue. Maybe the pipelines from Mosul to the Mediterranean Sea ports are, but I don't think the ones through Syria are operating. The Jordanian-Israeli pipeline might be (or at least could be if you chased ISIL away from it in Iraq).

Humanity, throughout its history (and prehistory) has been a nomadic, and tribal, species. The current "borders" are of recent derivation, mostly the result of successive conquests. There isn't anything to prevent reassessment, other than established grudges. Local rule, however, is always problematic (especially for minorities). A "nation" needed to be large enough to sustain itself and that requires resources. In all of that time (history and prehistory) there is little or no record of anyone voluntarily relinquishing their own resources. Do we see that changing?

I guess the competing affinities here are nationalism versus religion. I can see the Shia government in Baghdad deciding they are going to be happier without the (mostly Sunni and decidedly not Iraqi) Kurds.

Neither side has much of an identification with an Iraqi identity. The Kurds have their own strong sense of Kurdishness, and I think the Shia feel like their creed is more important then their country.

If it's ever going to happen, this might be the time.

What is the difference between the realignment in Iraq and the plebiscites in Spain, the UK, Canada; the division of Sudan, Yugoslavia, Ukraine? Basically, it is just the level of violence. The desire for identity is universal. A "nation" is born when certain standards and principals are universal enough within a population to create adherence. It falls apart when those standards and principals no longer hold sway (our own Civil War is an example). We are not that far from our own "Kurdish problem" at home, as the political makeup of our coasts and the swath of red in the center and south are diverging into completely different populations.