Syrian Kurds Battle ISIL Advance On Key Town

Syrian Kurds battled to defend a key border town from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) advance on Monday as Kurdish youths from neighboring Turkey rushed to their aid, heightening the pressure on Ankara to act against Islamist insurgents.

The main Kurdish armed group in northern Syria, the YPG, said its fighters had halted the ISIL advance east of the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, but that fierce fighting was continuing.

Hundreds of Kurdish youths gathered on the Turkish side of the border, responding to calls from Kurdish leaders to join the fight against ISIL fighters who have seized swathes of Iraq and Syria and proclaimed a caliphate.

Turkish security forces are now trying to keep Kurds from crossing the frontier to aid their brethren. At the Mürşitpınar border crossing, a line of paramilitary police stood guard along a barbed-wire border fence. The private Doğan news agency reported on Monday that 500 Syrians went to their homeland to fight against ISIL in Kobani. Those who went back to Syria reportedly said they came to Turkey to place their family members in a secure shelter. However, violent incidents that started on Sunday continued on Monday.

A group of people who wanted to cross into Syria to support Kurds fighting in Kobani attacked police forces again on Monday with sticks and stones when security forces prevented their entrance into Syria. A vehicle was set on fire during the tumult, according to news agencies. Police and soldiers fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the crowd.

"We all want to cross the border. We tried yesterday but they attacked us, and we will try again today," said balaclava-clad Kurdish activist Shirwan, 28, holding a large Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) flag.

İsmet, 19, a local man who makes a living collecting strawberries, said the protesters had gathered from cities across Turkey's predominantly Kurdish Southeast. "They are not from around here. They come from Şırnak, Van, Mardin, Nusaybin," he said.

He added that several hundred Turkish Kurds had already crossed to join the fight. Other residents said the figure was higher.

The advances by the ISIL insurgents just across Turkey's southern border have alarmed Ankara. But so far Turkey has been slow to join calls for a coalition to fight ISIL, worried in part about links between the Syrian Kurds and Turkey's own PKK, which waged an armed campaign for Kurdish rights over several decades.

The PKK called Turkey's Kurds to arms on Sunday, saying "supporting this heroic resistance" in Kobani was a "debt of honor." Radio stations played patriotic Kurdish songs about heroic fighters and martyrs and one played recordings of PKK commander Murat Karayılan in a bid to drum up support.

Treading difficult line

Fierce clashes continued on Monday but the ISIL advance to the east of Kobani, scene of the fiercest fighting since the insurgents launched their offensive last Tuesday, had been halted, Redur Xelil, spokesman for the YPG, said via Skype.

He said hundreds of Turkish Kurds were already helping in the struggle to push back the insurgents.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks violence in the Syrian war, said ISIL fighters had made no significant advance in the last 24 hours.

Turkey, a NATO member with a big US air base in the southern town of İncirlik, has so far made clear it does not want to take a frontline military role. Initially, officials said they were wary of fighting ISIL because the group was holding 46 Turkish hostages -- including Turkey's consul general in the Iraqi city of Mosul, soldiers and children -- who were freed on Saturday. However, Turkish officials said policy toward ISIL was unlikely to change.

"The hostages weren't the only concern for our Iraq and Syria policy," said one senior Turkish official, declining to be identified so as to speak more freely.

"There are security problems especially in the Kurdish regions of Syria. We are always ready to help them but that doesn't mean that we will carry out a military operation. … Turkey will continue to be a part of the coalition but our policies on Iraq and Syria will not change," he said.

Turkey launched a peace process in 2012 to end a 30-year-old conflict with the PKK, listed as a terrorist organization by Ankara, the European Union and the US. Mutual suspicion still runs high between Kurdish communities and the security forces in large parts of the Southeast.

In Iraq, where there is an autonomous Kurdish region with its own official security forces, European countries, including Germany, France and Italy, have already agreed to send the Kurds light weapons to use against ISIL militants.

But in Syria, where Kurdish fighters have no official status and their leaders are more closely linked to the banned PKK, outside help is more complicated.

Opposition politicians in Germany have called for the PKK to be taken off the EU list of terrorist groups.

Turkey remains strongly opposed to such a move and diplomats say it would not be considered without Turkish accord.

"The threat to the Yazidis and Christians in northern Iraq is no reason, in my view, to reconsider the ban," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told broadcaster ARD on Sunday.

"The ban stands. We are delivering weapons to [Iraqi] Kurdish security forces; that is what we decided."

(Cihan/Today's Zaman)