Ukraine in Arabic | Turkey to allow Kurds across its territory to fight in Kobani
KYIV/Ukraine in Arabic/ Turkey will allow Kurdish peshmerga forces from northern Iraq across its territory to defend Kurds in the besieged Syrian border town of Kobani, in a move that fighters say could tip a month-long battle against Islamic State (Isis) insurgents in their favor.
The announcement marked an abrupt shift from Ankara’s position of refusing to militarily help the Kurds of Kobani and came hours after the US military dropped 24 tons of weapons and medicines in the first supply run it had made to the besieged town in nearly five weeks of fighting.
“We are helping the Peshmerga cross into Kobani. Our discussions are still underway,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said during a joint press conference with Tunisian Foreign Minister Mongi Hamdi.
Although Cavusoglu did not elaborate on the ongoing discussions, Foreign Ministry sources confirmed that crossings of Peshmerga forces through Turkey had already begun.
Turkey had been in “full cooperation with the international coalition over Kobani,” Cavusoglu said.
“We have never wanted Kobani to fall [into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant - ISIL] and never will. Turkey has made every effort to prevent that. Turkey sent humanitarian assistance and medical equipment. We have been in full cooperation with coalition forces for Kobani. We want the region to be cleaned of all threats,” he said.
Arms are for joint fighters defending Kobani
The U.S. Central Command said it had delivered on Oct. 19 weapons, ammunition and medical supplies provided by Kurdish authorities in Iraq “in the vicinity of Kobani, Syria, to resupply Kurdish forces on the ground defending the city against ISIL.”
Cavusoglu said Turkey viewed that U.S. air-dropped arms to Syrian rebels fighting in Kobani as part of these efforts.
The forces fighting in Kobani are not only from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), he said, noting that there seven or eight other groups of Syrian rebels that formed a joint operations room for the defense of the town called “Euphrates Volcano.”
Turkey agrees with the U.S. and other allies that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) is the only group which should be supported as it is fighting both ISIL and the Bashar al-Assad regime, Cavusoglu said.
He renewed calls for the PYD to cooperate with the wider FSA opposition and to abandon its efforts to carve out autonomous Kurdish regions in Syria. The PYD will not obtain Turkey’s support so long as it continues to pursue its goal of controlling a specific part of Syria, he said.
Cavusoglu’s statement came after a phone call from U.S. President Barack Obama to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the weekend, during which he gave advance notice to his Turkish counterpart of its plans to deliver arms to the Syrian Kurds.
“President Obama spoke to Erdogan yesterday and was able to notify him of our intent to do this and the importance that we put on it,” Reuters quoted a senior U.S. official as saying.
Turkish diplomatic sources told that the U.S. military did not use Turkish air space in air-dropping arms from the KRG to the People’s Protection Units (YPG), as the YPG continues to battle the Islamic State or Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Kobani.
Meanwhile, U.S. military air-drop of arms was a response to a crisis situation and did not represent a change in U.S. policy, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Oct. 20.
“We talked with Turkish authorities – I did, the president did, to make it very, very clear that this is not a shift in policy by the United States. It is a crisis moment, an emergency,” Kerry told reporters on a visit to Indonesia, adding that it was a “momentary effort.”
PYD, PKK the same for Erdogan
The Turkish government views the PYD with deep suspicion because of its ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and has previously turned down requests for it to open a land corridor so that Kobani could be resupplied from other Kurdish areas of northern Syria.
Erdogan recently equated the PYD with the PKK, describing both as terrorist organizations.
“It will be very wrong for America with whom we are allied and who we are together with in NATO to expect us to say ‘yes’ [to supporting the PYD] after openly announcing such support for a terrorist organization,” he said Oct. 18.