Kader Ortakaya, a 28 year old graduate student in Istanbul, was killed Thursday by Turkish forces on the Syrian border. Photo: Aso Viyan
Twenty-eight year old Kader Ortakaya was shot in the head on Thursday when she a dozen other activists rushed across the Turkish border into Kobane. Her body was taken to a hospital inside the city.
The activists were able to cross because border police were distracted by a shootout between Turkish troops and armed Syrian Kurds on the other side of the border.
A group of artists belonging to the ‘Initiative for Free Art’ had formed a human chain near the border, and Ferhat Tunç, a prominent Zaza-Kurdish musician from Turkey, was giving an interview on television when violence began.
Turkish military fired tear gas on the crowd, who had been shouting slogans and flashing victory signs representing support for the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and their affiliate in Syria, the Democratic Unity Party (PYD). The PKK is considered a terrorist group in Turkey, where it has conducted a three decade long insurrection against the government, which has a long history of violently suppressing Kurdish rights.
Witnesses report that the military then began to fire live ammunition on the crowd, at which point PYD supporters on the other side of the border returned fire. Several activists then crossed into Syria, at which point Kader Ortakaya was killed.
Ortakaya was a member of the Collective Freedom Platform, a PKK-linked group, and a graduate student at Marmara University in Istanbul. She had been at the protests in Gezi Park last year, and had been monitoring the Mürşitpınar crossing and other areas on the Syrian-Turkish border for over three weeks.
The group of activists she was with had been watching closely for instances of cooperation between Turkey and the Islamic State (ISIS), as well as for ways to support the PYD’s militia—the People’s Protection Units (YPG)—and as many as 500 citizens who remain in the city.
The PKK-linked Firat News Agency wrote that she was “deliberately” targeted by Turkish military, which had been silent about the event.
Meanwhile Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and Free Syrian Army forces have helped the local YPG fighters slowly reverse ISIS gains in the city.
“The situation is getting better,” says Ahmad Gardi, the Peshmerga commander on the ground in Kobane. “New weapons have arrived, and we will get more whenever they are needed. We will not leave until the city is wiped clean of ISIS.”
Gardi added that no Peshmerga had yet been killed, and that they have destroyed a number of ISIS tanks and artillery.
Polat Jan, a spokesperson for the YPG, told Rudaw that 250 YPG fighter have been killed since the siege began over seven weeks ago, but that the “existence of Peshmarga in Kobane changed the balance of power. We are advancing towards ISIS positions, and now the majority of the city is under our control.”
The majority of fighting has been in ISIS-controlled areas of east Kobane in recent days. A US-led coalition airstrike 25km east of the city on Thursday led some of the city’s defenders to believe ISIS had evacuated a number of troops, but the concentration of the estimated 3,000-4,000 ISIS militants around Kobane remains unclear.