Wednesday, October 01, 2014

IS attack on Kurdish town

From Ali, the Angry Arab's chief correspondent in Turkey:  "Turkish PM Davutoğlu has confessed the real reason behind the IS attack on Syria's Kurdish town of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab. According to Davutoğlu, Islamic State targets Kobane since PKK linked PYD refused to put an end to its relations with Syrian regime.

Since the PYD became a reality in northern Syria, Turkey firstly wanted to eradicate its presence, with the help of Syrian armed groups. Two years ago, IS, Al Nusra Front, Ahrar ash-Sham and Tawhid Brigade were joined their force to kick Kurdish militas from the Ras al-Ayn town of Hasakah and as well as Afrin.

Very before this campaign, many armed groups held a meeting in Turkish town of Gaziantep. During this meeting, representatives of the armed groups expressed their ambitions to eradicate Kurdish self-controlled regions in Northern Syria.

When this campaign failed and PYD linked YPG forces, repelled all attacks on Ras al-Ayn, this time Ankara made contact with PYD leader Saleh Muslim and invited him to Ankara. It isn't secret that Turkey forced Muslim to broke the relations with regime to take Ankara's full support. But Muslim repeated the rhetoric about their fight was also against regime but refused the Ankara's offer and turned back.

So Davutoğlu confessed that the simple fact, the recent IS attacks on Ayn al-Arab is to forcing Kurds to leave their neutral positions with Assad. Davutoğlu also said that they don't want to see neither Assad forces nor IS forces on their border and repeated Turkish aims on buffer zone. He said, what makes IS to flourish is the regimes fighter jets, while expressing his support for US led coalition strikes on IS. On the other hand, President Erdoğan today says “War against Syrian regime is our priority”

Thousands of IS militants with sophisticated weapons have been attacking Ayn al-Arab since the mid of September and captured at least 200 villages so far. Yesterday, it was said IS forces were 2 kilometers close to the centre of the town and were prepearing a city war... Kurdish politicians as well as local people have been blaming Turkey with supporting IS forces. Today, Turkish IMC TV aired the video showing IS militants freely passing Turkish border into Syria to capture a strategic hill located east of the city. But Turkish officials denied this claim, said the militants didn't pass into Turkish territory...

Perhaps that's why US led coalition strike IS near the besieged town but obviously didn't hit them hard yet. "