Kurds Archives

Turkey, Officials say 348 kurds detained in İstanbul in Kobani protests

October 14, 2014 By administrator

A total of 348 people have been detained in the past week during protests that erupted over the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) attacks on the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani, security officials announced on Tuesday. Report Today Zaman

The İstanbul Police Department said in a statement released on Tuesday that 348 people were detained between Oct. 6 and Oct. 13 in İstanbul and that 102 of those detained were minors. The statement said 336 detainees were sent to court for arrest and 10 were arrested.
According to the statement, among the materials seized from the suspects were 111 Molotov cocktails, two unlicensed guns and three pump rifles.

People took to the streets last Tuesday following reports that ISIL was very near to capturing the town of Kobani, which is being defended by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian-based affiliate of the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Fighting still continues in the Syrian town, which is situated very near the Turkish border.

More than 30 people have been killed during the protests, mainly in southeastern Turkey, while over 350 people — including 139 members of security forces — were injured. Over a thousand protestors have been detained in connection with the protests, which erupted in 35 provinces across Turkey.

Kurds clash with Turkish security forces on Syria border

October 5, 2014 By administrator

Turkish Kurds and refugees from fighting in Syria have clashed with Turkish security forces on the border between the two countries.

Troops used tear gas and water cannon to disperse protesters angry at the situation in Syria, where IS militants are closing in on the town of Kobane.

Meanwhile unconfirmed reports say at least 35 militants were killed in US-led air strikes over northern Syria.

They come amid a Turkish-US row over alleged support for Syrian militants.

On Friday US Vice-President Joe Biden criticised Turkey and US allies in the Arab world for supporting Sunni militant groups such as Islamic State, prompting a sharp response from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“If Mr Biden used such language, that would make him a man of the past for me,” he told a news conference in Istanbul.

“No-one can accuse Turkey of having supported any terrorist organisation in Syria, including IS.”

Turkish security forces used tear gas and water cannon to break up the protests

Iraq Kurds fight Islamic State at key Syria border crossing

September 30, 2014 By administrator

Iraqi Kurds have made gains against “Islamic State” militants at a strategic crossing on the Syrian border. Elsewhere, the jihadists are said to have advanced closer to the frontier town of Ayn al-Arab, or Kobani.

Iraqi Kurds entered the border district of Rabia early Tuesday, engaging in fierce clashes with Islamic State militants. Senior sources in the Kurdish peshmerga told media the fighting is still ongoing, while another said the Kurdish forces have recaptured the crossing.

“We have ousted IS from 30 positions, including in the Zumar and Rabia areas,” peshmerga spokesman Halgord Hekmat said.

Rabia lies about 100 kilometers (60 miles) northwest of Mosul, which IS seized in a lightning offensive in early June. Zumar lies near the reservoir of Iraq’s largest dam, which has been a key battleground between the Kurds and IS.

The capture of Rabia is seen as crucial, because it would link the Iraqi Kurdish fighters with Syrian Kurds under attack over the border. The ability to cross the frontier freely has been a major strategic advantage for Islamic State fighters on both sides.

US-led forces have been bombing IS targets in Iraq since August, expanding the campaign to Syria last week. IS fighters have swept through Sunni areas in both countries, killing prisoners, chasing out Kurds and ordering Shiites and non-Muslims to convert, or die.

In August, the jihadist group also began to kill foreigners as revenge against countries who are contributing to the US-led air strikes. The group executed American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, British aid worker David Haines and French citizen Herve Gourdel.

Kobani under threat

The Islamic State is also threatening to overrun Kobani, a Kurdish town near the Syrian-Turkish border, known by its Arabic name of Ayn al-Arab. Surrounding villages have been under attack by IS since mid-September, with the fighting forcing at least 150,000 Kurds to flee to Turkey.

The British-based, pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Islamic State fighters have advanced to within two kilometers of Kobani. Kurdish authorities there have appealed for help from the US-led coalition.

The Turkish parliament is due to debate whether to authorize military action in Syria, and join the international coalition against the IS.

The Iraqi Kurds are appearing to claw back land from the jihadists. The Peshmerga secretary general, Jabbar Yawar, says Kurdish forces have retaken around half the territory lost to the Islamic State when the militants surged north towards the regional Irbil in August. That advance helped to prompt the US air strikes.

jr/dr (dpa, Reuters, AFP)

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Turkey prevents Kurdish refugees from fighting ISIL

September 26, 2014 By administrator

Turkey has kept its border closed to prevent Syrian Kurdish refugees from returning to the city of Kobani to fight the ISIL terrorists there, Press TV reports.

The Syrian Kurdish refugees remain resolute to help the Kurds in Syria and other Kurdish regions along Turkey’s border fighting against the Takfiri group. They, however, say that Turkish authorities prevent them from joining the Kurdish fighters.

“We want to help the people there but the border is closed. The humanitarian situation of the Kurds is not good there,” Huseyin Gugor, from Kurdish Freedom and Democracy Party, told Press TV.

Turkish Kurds accuse Ankara of being sympathetic toward the militants belonging to the ISIL Takfiri group.

“Most of the ISIL members are passing through Turkey,” Gugor said, adding that the militants enter Kurdistan region via Turkey.

“If it wants, Turkey can provide peace in this region. But it does not,” he further noted.

The Syrian Kurds fleeing clashes between ISIL and Kurdish fighters in the Kurdish city of Kobani and the surrounding areas have been massing along the Turkish border since September 18.

Following the incident, Turkish authorities decided to temporarily shut down the border, forcing the Kurdish refugees to be stranded on the Syrian side of the volatile frontier. More recently, however, as the refugees were allowed in, Turkey has faced a rise in the number of the Kurdish refugees entering its soil. According to the United Nations on Monday, over 130,000 Kurdish refugee entered Turkey within three days.

Quoting Turkish government officials and media reports, The New York Times reported on Monday that Turkey is one of the biggest sources of foreign fighters for the Takfiri group, which has captured large swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

The ISIL has captured nearly 60 Kurdish villages around the city of Kobani in Aleppo’s countryside, located in northwestern Syria.

Kurd’s, Turkey’s IS predicament with US,

September 24, 2014 By administrator

Much more striking was PKK military commander Murat Karayilan’s accusation that to secure the release of its hostages, Turkey let IS capture Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish stronghold on its border, which is just across from Turkey’s Suruc, the hometown of Karayilan himself.

Karayilan’s statement to Sterk TV had some striking points about the IS attacks, Turkish government policies and the peace process. Karayilan said the IS assault on Kobani “is a joint plan by Turkey and IS. We have documents of it. Turkey has once again stabbed the Kurds in the back. Turkey wanted to sell Kobani but it can’t. Kobani is Kurdistan.”

About the peace process, Karayilan said, “Turkey cannot deceive us again. This is a declaration of war. It will be assessed by our leader and command but for HPG [the PKK’s armed wing] this process has no more meaning.”

Karayilan said, ”Kobani will not fall as planned by Daesh [IS in Arabic] and the AKP [Justice and Development Party]. To the contrary. Tell Abyad will fall. It is time to expel this dirty and savage gang from Kurdistan.”

Regarding the hostage release, Karayilan said, “They released the hostages on Sept. 20. Their plan was for Daesh to enter Kobani on Sept. 20. They say they didn’t make an exchange, but they sold Kobani. Kobani is not theirs. This is not a diplomatic victory but a diplomatic scandal.”

Imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, in a message he sent from his Imrali prison cell, guardedly criticized Turkey and called on Kurds to mobilize for Rojava and Kobani. Ocalan’s lawyer quoted him saying about the negotiations between the government and IS about the hostages: “The state openly said that it negotiated for the release of the Mosul hostages. But it has yet to start the negotiation process to resolve such a deep issue as the Kurdish problem.”

The lawyer said Ocalan called for negotiations to start as soon as possible.

About IS attacks, the lawyer quoted Ocalan saying, “Our people have to adjust their lives to cope with the high-intensity war they are facing. Not only the people of Rojava, but Kurds all over have to [adapt] to it. I am calling on all the Kurdish people to resist this high-intensity war.”

It is clear that IS is becoming a predicament for Turkey’s government in its relations with the West and simultaneously with the Kurds in the region.

KRG’s disappointment with Turkey for allegedly failing to come to its aid when Erbil was threatened by IS is getting much more menacing dimensions with Turkey’s and Syria’s Kurds because of the Turkish reluctance to take action against IS in its aggression toward the Syrian Kurdish bastion of Kobani.

Cengiz Candar is a columnist for Al-Monitor‘s Turkey Pulse. A journalist since 1976, he is the author of seven books in the Turkish language, mainly on Middle East issues, including the best-seller Mesopotamia Express: A Journey in History.

Kurds call on ‘all Middle East’ to help defend stronghold from Isis

September 21, 2014 By administrator

Tens of thousands of Kurdish refugees have fled to Syria-Turkey border region of Kobani to escape onslaught of Islamist militantsKurdish fighters from Turkey and Iraq are scrambling to help defend a vital Kurdish safe haven in northern Syria, where tens of thousands of Kurds have fled after an offensive by Islamic State (Isis) militants.

The border region of Kobani, home to half a million people, has held out for months against an onslaught by Islamists seeking to consolidate their hold over swaths of northern Syria. But in recent days, Isis extremists have seized a series of settlements close to the town of Kobani itself, sending as many as 100,000 mostly Kurdish refugees streaming across the border into Turkey.

“I don’t think in the last three and a half years we have seen 100,000 cross in two days,” the representative for the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) in Turkey, Carol Batchelor, told Reuters. “So this is a bit of a measure of how this situation is unfolding, and the very deep fear people have about the circumstances inside Syria and, for that matter, Iraq.”

A Kurdish commander on the ground said Isis had advanced to within 9 miles (15km) of Kobani.

A Kurdish politician from Turkey who visited Kobani on Saturday said locals told him Isis fighters were beheading people as they went from village to village.

“Rather than a war this is a genocide operation … They are going into the villages and cutting the heads of one or two people and showing them to the villagers,” Ibrahim Binici, a deputy for Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP), told Reuters.

“It is truly a shameful situation for humanity,” he said, calling for international intervention. Five of his fellow MPs planned a hunger strike outside UN offices in Geneva to press for action, he said.

The Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), a rebel group that has spent three decades fighting for autonomy for Turkey’s Kurds, renewed a call for the youth of Turkey’s mostly Kurdish south-east to rise up and rush to save Kobani.

“Supporting this heroic resistance is not just a debt of honour of the Kurds but all Middle East people. Just giving support is not enough, the criterion must be taking part in the resistance,” it said in a statement on its website. “[Isis] fascism must drown in the blood it spills … The youth of North Kurdistan [south-east Turkey] must flow in waves to Kobani,” it said.

Hundreds of people gathered in solidarity for a third day on the Turkish side of the barbed wire border fence near the town of Suruc, where many of the refugees have crossed. Security forces trying to maintain order fired teargas and water cannon and some protesters started throwing stones at them in frustration.

Even by the standards of Syria’s bitter war, the refugee numbers are alarming. Their numbers add to the 2.8 million Syrians who have become refugees in the past three years, and another 6.4 million who have been displaced within their own country – approaching half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million.

UNHCR and the Turkish authorities said they were preparing for the possibility of hundreds of thousands more refugees arriving in the coming days.

Kobani’s relative stability through much of Syria’s conflict meant 200,000 internally displaced people were sheltering there before Isis’s advance, UNHCR said.

“This massive influx shows how important it is to offer and preserve asylum space for Syrians as well as the need to mobilise international support to the neighbouring countries,” said Antonio Guterres, the UN high commissioner for refugees.

Bombings targeting Kurds kill at least 17 in Iraq

June 8, 2014 By administrator

SULAIMANIYAH – Agence France-Presse

A man inspects the site of a car bomb attack in Baghdad, June 8. REUTERS Photo

A car bomb followed by a suicide bombing hit offices of a Kurdish political party and security forces in Iraq on June 8, killing 17 people, police and doctors said.

The blasts in the town of Jalawla, north of Baghdad, also wounded 50 people, the sources said.

A senior police official said the car bomb went off close to an office of President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party and a Kurdish asayesh security forces building. As emergency workers came to the scene, the suicide bomber entered the PUK office and detonated explosives, he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, though suicide bombings are a tactic mainly employed by Sunni Muslim militants in Iraq.

The fresh attacks come a day after a series of bombings mainly targeting Shiite-majority areas of Baghdad killed at least 24 people.

The six car bombings and one roadside bomb hit seven different areas of the Iraqi capital, also wounding more than 80 people.

Alos on June 7, clashes between security forces and militants in the northern city of Mosul killed 59 people. In Ramadi, west of Baghdad, militants took hundreds of students and staff hostage at a university, sparking an assault led by special forces to free them.

Violence is running at its highest levels since 2006-2007, when tens of thousands were killed in sectarian conflict between Iraq’s Shiite majority and Sunni Arab minority.

More than 900 people were killed last month, according to figures separately compiled by the United Nations and the government. So far this year, more than 4,300 people have been killed, according to AFP figures.

June/08/2014

Kurds, al-Nusra clash at Turkey’s Syrian border

July 18, 2013 By administrator

People’s Defense Units (YPG) and an al-Qaeda-linked group engaged in a fierce fight near the Turkish border town of Ceylanpınar in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

The YPG, the militant wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) allegedly linked to Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), reportedly took control of the Ras al-Ayn-Ceylanpınar border gate amid other clashes between the YPG and the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front that have been continuing since July 16.

Turkey, meanwhile, returned fire into Syrian territory after shots fired from the Syrian side during the PYD-al-Nusra battle struck Ceylanpınar.

Kurdish fighters “have taken near-total control of Ras al-Ayn after fierce battles that have raged since [July 16] evening, pitting [Kurds] against the al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and other groups,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The clashes between Kurdish fighters and jihadists broke out after al-Nusra attacked a convoy of Kurdish women fighters, said observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman. Nine jihadists and two Kurdish fighters have been killed since battles erupted in the town on July 16, he said.

The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) said the parties to the clash were the “separatist terrorist organization” and “opponents.” There are also some reports claiming that the PYD is fighting the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the armed wing of the Syrian opposition.

Meanwhile, two people were killed by stray bullets fired from Syrian side in border town Ceylanpınar.