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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Turkey to let Iraqi Kurds reinforce in Kobani
2014-10-21
Turkey said on Monday it would allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to reinforce fellow Kurds in the Syrian border town of Kobani, while the United States air-dropped arms for the first time to help the defenders resist an ISIS assault.
If the Turks had allowed aid and arms in the first place they could have built some good will with the Syrian and Iraqi Kurds, who then could have influenced the Kurds in Turkey. But they didn't and thus reinforced to every Kurd in the world that the Turks are still their natural enemy...
Washington said the arms had been supplied by Iraqi Kurdish authorities and had been dropped near Kobani, which came under ISIS attack in September and is now besieged to the east, west and south, and bordered to the north by Turkey.

Turkey has stationed tanks on hills overlooking Kobani but has refused to help the Kurdish militias on the ground without striking a broader deal with its Nato allies on intervening in the Syrian civil war, saying action should also be taken against Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
Apparently the Turks couldn't withstand whatever moral condemnation was coming their way over their letting the Kurds die.
However, Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference that Turkey was facilitating the passage of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces which have also fought ISIS when the militants attacked the Kurds' autonomous region in Iraq over the summer. He gave no details.

Earlier the US Central Command said it had delivered weapons, ammunition and medical supplies to allow the Kurdish fighters to keep up their resistance in the town which is called Kobani in Kurdish and Ayn Al Arab in Arabic. The main Syrian Kurdish armed group, the YPG, said it had received "a large quantity" of ammunition and weapons.

Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the YPG, said the weapons dropped overnight would have a "positive impact" on the battle and the morale of fighters who have been out-gunned by ISIS. But he added: "Certainly it will not be enough to decide the battle."

"We do not think the battle of Kobani will end that quickly. The forces of (Islamic State) are still heavily present and determined to occupy Kobani. In addition, there is resolve (from the YPG) to repel this attack," he told Reuters in an interview conducted via Skype. He declined to give more details on the shipment.

The resupply of Kurdish fighters marks an escalation in the US effort to help local forces beat back the militant group in Syria. It points to the growing coordination between the US military and a Syrian Kurdish group that had been kept at arms' length by the West due partly to the concerns of Nato member Turkey.

Washington has pressed Ankara to let it use bases in Turkey to stage the air strikes, and a Turkish foreign ministry official said the country's airspace had not been used during the drops on Kobani.

US President Barack Obama gave advance notice to his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan of its plans to deliver arms to the Syrian Kurds, a group Turkey views with distrust because of its links to Turkish Kurds who have fought an insurgency in which 40,000 people were killed.
Posted by:Steve White

#1  As per DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS, Turkey is repor arming + allowing KRG + YPG Kurd fighters to leave for Kobane/Kobani, but NOT PKK???
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2014-10-21 02:24  

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