Turkey said yesterday it would allow Iraqi Kurdish fighters to reinforce fellow Kurds in the Syrian town of Kobane, while the United States air-dropped arms for the first time to help the defenders resist an Islamic State assault.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington had asked Ankara to let Iraqi Kurds cross its territory so that they could help defend the town which lies on the Turkish frontier, adding that he hoped the Kurds would “take this fight on.”
Kurdish militias in Kobane have been fighting off an Islamic State offensive since September without, until now, outside help apart from US-led airstrikes on the jihadists. The town, which is besieged by Islamic State on three sides, lies on the frontline of the battle to foil the radical group’s attempt to reshape the Middle East.
However, Ankara views the Syrian Kurds with deep suspicion because of their ties to the PKK, a group that waged a decades-long militant campaign for Kurdish rights in Turkey and which Washington regards as a terrorist organisation.
Speaking in Indonesia, Kerry acknowledged Turkish concerns about support for the Kurds, and said the airdrop of supplies provided by the Kurdish authorities in Iraq did not amount to a change of US policy. He indicated that the battle against Islamic State, a group also known by the acronym ISIL that has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq, was an overriding consideration.
“We understand fully the fundamentals of (Ankara’s) opposition and ours to any kind of terrorist group, and particularly, obviously, the challenges they face with respect to the PKK,” he told reporters. But he added: “We cannot take our eye off the prize here. It would be irresponsible of us, as well as morally very difficult, to turn your back on a community fighting ISIL.”
Iraqi Kurdish official Hemin Hawrami, writing on his Twitter feed, said 21 tonnes of weapons and ammunition supplied by the Iraqi Kurds had been dropped in the small hours of Monday.
Turkey has stationed tanks on hills overlooking Kobane but has refused to help the Kurdish militias on the ground, suspicious of their links to the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) and demanding broader US action that would target Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as well as Islamic State.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference that Ankara was facilitating the passage of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces which have also fought Islamic State when the militants attacked the Kurds’ autonomous region in Iraq over the summer. Syrian Kurdish officials, however, said no backup had arrived.
