|
 The town has become the focus of international attention since the
Islamists' advance drove 180,000 of the area's mostly Kurdish
inhabitants to flee into adjoining Turkey, which has infuriated its
own restive Kurdish minority -- and its NATO partners in Washington
-- by refusing to intervene.
Islamic State hoisted its black flag on the eastern edge of the town
on Monday but, since then, air strikes have redoubled by a U.S.-led
coalition that includes Gulf states seeking to reverse the
jihadists' dramatic advance across northern Syria and Iraq.
Intense gunfire could be heard on Wednesday morning from across the
Turkish border.
"They are now outside the entrances of the city of Kobani. The
shelling and bombardment was very effective and as a result of it,
IS have been pushed from many positions," Idris Nassan, deputy
foreign minister of Kobani district, told Reuters by phone.
"This is their biggest retreat since their entry into the city and
we can consider this as the beginning of the countdown of their
retreat from the area."
Islamic State had been advancing on the strategically important town
from three sides and pounding it with artillery despite dogged
resistance from heavily outgunned Kurdish forces.
TURKISH TANKS
Defense experts said it was unlikely that the advance could be
halted by air power alone -- a fact that left not only Washington
but also the Syrian Kurds' ethnic kin across the border demanding to
know why the Turkish tanks lined up within sight of Kobani had not
rolled across the frontier.
However, many Turks outside the southeast think it is far better to
risk alienating the Kurds than be sucked into a ground war in Syria.
At least 12 people died and dozens more were injured on Tuesday as
sympathisers of the outlawed Kurdish PKK militant group clashed with
police and Islamists in towns and cities across Turkey's
predominantly Kurdish southeast as well as in Istanbul and Ankara.
Authorities imposed curfews in five southeastern provinces and sent
troops and tanks onto the streets of Diyarbakir, the largest Kurdish
city in the region, to try to quell the unrest.
"We are here to protest too. This is repression, this is an insult
to the Kurdish people," said Ibrahim Oba, 54, who had traveled to
the border near Kobani to join protests against Turkish inaction.
"If Turkey had intervened, this would not have happened, but they
are just watching."
 An unnamed senior U.S. official told the New York Times on Tuesday
that there was "growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to act
to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its border".
"This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone's
throw from their border," the official said.
[to top of second column] |
While taking in Kobani's refugees and treating its wounded, Turkey
-- which has the second largest army in NATO -- has deep
reservations about military intervention. LIST OF CONDITIONS
Beyond becoming a target for Islamic State, which is active along
much of Syria's border with Turkey, it fears being sucked into
Syria's complex civil war and perhaps even having to fight the
forces of its declared enemy, President Bashar al-Assad.
With this in mind, President Tayyip Erdogan has set stringent
conditions for Turkey to contemplate attacking Islamic State on
Syrian sovereign territory.
On Tuesday, he reiterated those demands: the enforcement of a
'no-fly zone' over Syria near Turkey's border; the creation of a
safe zone inside Syria to enable an estimated 1.2 million refugees
currently in Turkey to return; and the arming of moderate opposition
groups to help topple Assad.
Ankara said on Tuesday that it had, however, urged the United States
to step up air strikes against Islamic State to hold up its advance
on Kobani.
Abdullah Ocalan, jailed leader of the PKK, last week said a massacre
of Kurds in Kobani would doom a fragile peace process with the
Turkish authorities aimed at ending the group's 30-year fight for
more autonomy, in which around 40,000 people have been killed.
 The street protests across Turkey were already making the prospect
of reconciliation with nationalists seem more remote, as protesters
set fire to Turkish flags and attacked statues of the founder of
modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Selahattin Demirtas, co-chair of the HDP, Turkey's leading Kurdish
party, condemned those acts, calling them "provocations carried out
to prevent help coming to the east (Kobani) from the west".
(Reporting by Daren Butler, Humeyra Pamuk in Turkey and Suleiman
al-Khalidi in Amman; writing by Jonny Hogg; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
[© 2014 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2014 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
