Kurds say Turkey not doing enough to stop Islamic State

Jacob Resneck

A crowd stands within earshot of the gunbattles raging between the Islamic State and Kurdish militias across the border in Syria. With a scarf concealing his face, one young man helps peel back the last set of barbed wire that divides Turkey and Syria.

He, like many in this crowd of thousands here, is itching for a fight.

As fierce battles rage over the mainly Kurdish city of Kobane, the West is worried it could be the next Syrian city to fall to Islamic State militants.

Villagers with family on both sides of the border are worried about their loved ones and are fed up with how Turkey is handling the situation, saying the government has mainly focused on keeping the Kurdish minority from aiding fellow Kurds in Syria.

"We would protect the people in Kobane and fight the Islamic State, but the Turkish police are helping the Islamic State — by preventing people from crossing the border," said Memet Sipan, a professional singer at the border trying to get across.

Another villager at the border, Suleyman Celik, 55, said, "The Islamic State is slicing babies, burning villages, they are killing children, they are beheading people. They do this is the name of Islam, but they are not Muslims."

U.S. airstrikes have targeted the Islamic State in nearby villages since Saturday, destroying a building held by militants and two armed vehicles at the Kobane border crossing, the Pentagon said.

While Turkey's rhetoric against the Islamic State has increased, it continues to keep its territory off-limits to the U.S.-led coalition conducting airstrikes against the militants.

This is causing friction with both Washington and Turkey's Kurdish minority. Villagers here blame Turkey's earlier open-door policy for jihadists wanting to topple Syria's regime with actually ending up helping the Islamic State rise to power — from a local militia in Iraq to a powerful force threatening the entire region and the West.

These allegations underline the deep mistrust of the Turkish government among the Kurdish population on both sides of the border. This stems from a guerrilla war in Turkey between the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) since the 1980s that has killed tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians from all sides.

Kurdish leaders in Turkey insist that Turkey must allow their people to cross into Syria to fight the Islamic State and deliver humanitarian aid.

"At first people were frightened of the Islamic State because of the horrible images in the media, like beheadings and such," said Kamuran Yuksek, 34, a leader in the pro-Kurdish Democratic Regions Party, on a visit to the nearby administrative capital Suruc. "But now people are becoming desensitized, and they are willing to fight them."

A precarious cease-fire remains on a knife's edge between Turkey and the outlawed PKK — listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. and Turkey. And Turkey distrusts the Kurdish militias that operate in its borderlands.

That tension is coming to a head. On Friday, a small group of Turkish soldiers on the border allowed some people in the crowd to cross into Syria. The soldiers were outnumbered by demonstrators bused-in from cities across Turkey by pro-Kurdish political parties. Within an hour, Turkish soldiers re-sealed the border after hundreds of riot police arrived and fired tear gas at crowds on both sides of the wire.

Friday's clashes were among several in recent weeks along the border and towns with ethnic Kurdish majorities. Turkey proposed a buffer zone of troops to help insulate the population, but Kurdish leaders are wary that the real purpose is to keep the PKK from strengthening in Syria.

That was alluded to Sunday when Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS, a rising threat. He also warned of the dangers of a rising Kurdish militancy by the outlawed PKK.

"Hey world, if you openly speak out against ISIS as a terrorist organization, why don't you openly speak out against PKK as a terrorist organization," Erdogan said at the World Economic Forum in Istanbul.

Local Kurdish leaders decry Turkey's comments about fighting religious extremism but barring people from joining the fight.

"Instead of helping the people with their fight for democracy, the (Turkish) government is attacking them," said local pro-Kurdish party leader Ismail Kaplan, whose town of Suruc has taken in more than 150,000 refugees in the past week. "This doesn't come to us as a surprise, as we know their ideology."