Turkish security forces clash with Kurds as PKK sends aid to Kobani

Turkey witnessed very tense moments on its border with Syria on Sunday as Turkish security forces clashed with hundreds of Kurds who allegedly wanted to stream into Syria to fight the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Also on Sunday, the terrorist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) issued a new call to arms to defend the frontier town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish, and sent some 400 members to join the fight in Syria against ISIL. The PKK members were allegedly equipped with anti-aircraft weapons, anti-tank missiles and rifles.

For the past few days, Turkey has been facing one of the biggest influxes of refugees from neighboring Syria as civilians continue to flee attacks by ISIL. The terrorist group has seized dozens of villages close to the border and advanced on Kobani. At least 70,000 people are confirmed to have crossed into Turkey since Sept. 19.

Kobani sits in a strategic position on the Turkish-Syrian border and has prevented radical ISIL militants from consolidating their gains across northern Syria. ISIL has reportedly seized at least 64 villages around Kobani and is now within 15 kilometers (nine miles) of the town.

Hundreds of Kurds in Suruç, a town in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, were allegedly hoping to enter Syria to join the fight against ISIL when they were stopped by Turkish security forces on Sunday. Security forces fired tear gas and water cannons to disperse the group and Kurdish protesters responded with stones, according to some media reports. However, local media reported Kurds as saying they wanted to take aid to beleaguered Kurds in Syria.

After gendarmes fired tear gas and water cannons people began to flee the border zone on foot and in vehicles. Several ambulances were among dozens of vehicles that sped up the road towards the town of Suruç. There was no immediate information on casualties.

A number of Kurdish deputies were among those affected by the tear gas.

Diyarbakır Mayor Gültan Kışanak said Kobani will “never fall.” “The people who are here today, young and old, women and children, are all prepared to cross over to Kobani and defend it,” she noted.

İbrahim Binici, a deputy from the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), spoke to Reuters after visiting Kobani on Saturday. He said locals had told him that ISIL terrorists were beheading people as they went from village to village. “Rather than a war this is a genocide operation. … They are going into villages and cutting the heads of one or two people and showing them to the villagers,” he noted.

Early Sunday, a Turkish daily claimed that about 300 members of the PKK and the Democratic Union Party (PYD), an offshoot of the PKK, had been executed by ISIL. According to Milliyet, ISIL took captive some 300 PKK and PYD members in different villages in Syria and later shot them to death in Kobani.

The daily also said ISIL terrorists forced some of the PKK and PYD members to undress, dragged them on the ground and later executed them.

The ISIL violence was followed by a call from the PKK, which said, “Turkey's mostly Kurdish Southeast must rise up and rush to save Kobani.”

“Supporting this heroic resistance is not just a debt of honor of the Kurds but all Middle Eastern peoples. Just giving support is not enough; the norm must be taking part in the resistance,” it said in a statement on its website.

“ISIL fascism must drown in the blood it spills … The youth of Northern Kurdistan [southeast Turkey] must flow in waves to Kobani,” it said.

Three HDP deputies -- Selma Irmak, Sebahat Tuncel and Kemal Aktaş -- set off on Sunday afternoon for Geneva in an attempt to draw the attention of the international community to what is going on in Kobani. Irmak, before leaving Turkey, told the press that she and the two other deputies are planning to launch a hunger strike in front of the United Nations office in Geneva.

“In addition to the hunger strike, we will hold diplomatic exchanges with UN officials. We will ask the UN and international powers to send military aid to Kurds to eliminate the ISIL violence,” Irmak noted.

Turkey is exerting its utmost to accommodate more refugees from Syria. After initially turning people back, authorities opened parts of the frontier on Sept. 19 to allow civilians to cross to safety. Turkey is already hosting 1.3 million Syrian refugees and officials estimate the relief effort has cost the government over $3 billion.

Those fleeing violence in Kobani are either sent to the houses of Turkish relatives or accommodated in tent cities set up in a number of cities neighboring the Syrian border. Some others, however, are trying to survive in mosques and on the streets.