NEWS
1. Turkish jets bombard Kurdish positions
2. Turkey bombs Kurdish rebel targets in southeast
3. Turkey Bombs Anti-ISIS Kurds Inside Its Own Borders
4. People flock to border to join the vigil after crackdown by troops
5. Syrian Kurds on hunger strike over detention by Turkish forces
6. Turkey to expel detained Kobane Kurds to Syria: MP
7. Turkey outlines locations for potential safe zone in Syria
8. Syria warns Turkish government against a possible intervention
7. ‘Turkey is supporting IS’ ~ Mecdel Eseed, Arabic Patriotic Group
8. Kurdish Rebels Assail Turkish Inaction on ISIS as Peril to Peace Talks
9. KRG recognizes Rojava’s cantons
10. YPG Spokesman Can: We are Working with the Coalition against ISIS
11. Syrian Kurds Gain Importance In Campaign Against ISIS
12. Video: Kurdish Female Fighters of Kurdistan fighting ISIS terrorist in Kobane
13. PFLP calls for unified revolutionary front of solidarity with the struggle of people of Kobane against ISIS
14. Situation in Sinjar heats up: Ezidis make serious allegations against KDP
15. Kobanî resistance gave rise international solidarity with West Kurdistan
16. Tamils stand with Kurds in London over Kobane
17. Harrods shoppers ‘are buying into terror’
18. Obama: No ‘Quick Fixes’ Battling IS Militants
COMMENT, OPINION AND ANALYSIS
19. ‘The Freedom Fight Has Returned
20. Turkey bombs Kurdish forces as violence threatens to spill over
21. Erdogan’s final chance to make peace with the Kurds
22. Turkey can not have its Kurdish cake and eat it too
23. ISIS fighter in Kobanê: “Erdoğan has helped us a lot”
24. Kobani: What’s In A Name?
25. Turkey’s passive-aggressive inaction in Kobani is anti-Kurd, anti-peace politics. And it’s dangerous
26. Kobane Diary: 4 Days Inside the City Fighting an Unprecedented Resistance Against ISIS
27. Revolution will win in Kobanê!
28. Desperate Kobane situation is an opportunity for reconciliation
29. Kobanê and Beyond: Unfathomable Risks for Turkey and the Kurds
30. Turkey uses defense industry as political instrument
STATEMENTS
31. New KNK joint committee issues appeal on Kobane
32. The Resistance of Kobane will Triumph Over Tyranny
33. Statement by the Spokesperson of the EU High Representative on the situation in Kobane
ACTIONS
34. Petition: Aid the Kurds of Syria in their defence against ISIS
NEWS
1. Turkish jets bombard Kurdish positions
14 October 2014 / Guardian
Turkish fighter jets have bombarded Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) positions in south-eastern Turkey for the first time since the start of the peace process between the outlawed group and the Turkish government in 2012.
The attacks on the PKK came in the wake of violent clashes last week between Kurdish factions and security forces in several Turkish cities, as anger grows over perceived government inaction against the Islamic State (Isis) attack on the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria.
2. Turkey bombs Kurdish rebel targets in southeast
14 October 2014 / Yahoo
Turkish jets bombed targets in the southeast where members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) are based, the first strikes on the outlawed group since a 2013 ceasefire, a security source said Tuesday.
Turkish F-16 jets dropped bombs late Monday on PKK targets in the village of Daglica in the Kurdish-majority Hakkari province near the border with Iraq, the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.
3. Turkey Bombs Anti-ISIS Kurds Inside Its Own Borders
14 October 2014 / Slate
Turkey is bombing rebellious Kurds inside its own borders in a conflict over the country’s refusal to let Kurdish fighters travel to Syria to fight ISIS, reports say. From Reuters (“PKK” is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party):
Hurriyet newspaper’s website said Turkish warplanes had hit PKK targets in Turkey on Sunday, the first such strikes since a peace process began in Turkey two years ago. The strikes were also reported by media sympathetic to the PKK.
4. People flock to border to join the vigil after crackdown by troops
17 October 2014 / ANF
As the resistance vigil along the Suruç-Kobanê border continues for one month now despite all the repression and hindrances by Turkish security forces, hundreds of people from across North Kurdistan are flocking to the village of Mehser where soldiers brutally attacked the people late yesterday evening and night.
5. Syrian Kurds on hunger strike over detention by Turkish forces
17 October 2014/ Independent Ireland
Syrian Kurds detained by Turkish security forces after fleeing the fighting in a beleaguered border town have gone on hunger strike, further highlighting Turkey’s ambiguous role in the campaign against Isil jihadis. Around 265 Kurds – mostly middle-class professionals and their families – were taken into custody after crossing into Turkey on Sunday as Isil threatened to overrun Kobane, which has been under siege for nearly three weeks.
6. Turkey to expel detained Kobane Kurds to Syria: MP
17 October 2014 / Hurriyet
Turkey is planning to expel a group of Syrian Kurds who fled the besieged town of Kobane but were then detained for over a week on suspicion of having links to rebel Kurdish groups, a Turkish lawmaker said on Oct. 16. İbrahim Ayhan, a lawmaker from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said a group of over 150 Kurds still being held did not want to return to Syria amid the advance by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists.
7. Turkey outlines locations for potential safe zone in Syria
16 October 2014 / Hurriyet
Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has clarified the locations of possible internationally sanctioned safe zones near Syria’s border with Turkey, outlining a line stretching from the Mediterranean to Iraq.
“The buffer zone we mean here is not a military definition, but a humanitarian safe zone under military protection,” Davutoğlu said in an interview with Al-Jazeera Arabic on Oct. 15.
8. Syria warns Turkish government against a possible intervention
16 October 2014 / Hawarnews
Syria has categorically rejected the establishment of buffer zones in any part of its territory “under whatever pretext,” rejecting any intervention of foreign forces in its land. The country’s Foreign Ministry said that Syria “will take, in consultation with its friends, all of the necessary measures to preserve its national sovereignty and territorial integrity.” The statement harshly criticized Turkish attempts to seek a buffer zone on its soil, calling it a “gross violation” of the principles, goals and Charter of the United Nations and international law.
‘AKP provided all forms of political, military and logistic support to armed terrorist groups’
7. ‘Turkey is supporting IS’ ~ Mecdel Eseed, Arabic Patriotic Group
14 October 2014 / Medhaj News
A member of the Arabic Patriotic Group said that Turkey is supporting ‘terrorists’ in Kobanê and call on people in Turkey to support the kurdish people in North Kurdistan. Mecdel Eseed, a member of the Arabic Patriotic Group, talked to the western kurdish news agency Hawarnews (ANHA) about the resistance of the Kurdish people in North Kurdistan and Turkey’s support for the Islamic State (IS).
8. Kurdish Rebels Assail Turkish Inaction on ISIS as Peril to Peace Talks
12 October 2014 / New York Times
As jihadist fighters of the Islamic State lay siege to the Kurdish town of Kobani in Syria, the implications of the battle have resonated deeply among residents in this part of the Qandil Mountains in northeastern Iraq, hundreds of miles and a country away.
In this region, beneath craggy peaks near the Iranian border, is the headquarters of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which has been fighting a guerrilla war against the Turkish state for three decades, a fight that has claimed more than 30,000 lives.
9. KRG recognizes Rojava’s cantons
16 October 2014 / Hawarnews
The parliament in South Kurdistan decided yesterday to develop relationships with the cantons of Rojava after a day-long debate. 79 deputies approved a motion calling on the Federal Kurdistan Government to improve links with the administrations in Rojava.
After a debate yesterday in the South Kurdistan parliament, a motion was passed calling for relationships to be developed with the cantons established in Cezîre (Jazireh), Efrîn and Kobanî.
10. YPG Spokesman Can: We are Working with the Coalition against ISIS
14 October 2014 / Civiroglu
In an exclusive interview with the daily Radikal, Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) Spokesperson Polat Can says they are officially working with the International Coalition against ISIS, and their representative is in the Joint Operation Command Center.
11. Syrian Kurds Gain Importance In Campaign Against ISIS
16 October 2014 / Huffington Post
After more than a month of being outnumbered and outgunned, facing likely doom in Kobani, Kurdish fighters have begun to turn the tide against Islamic State militants with help from airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition.
The U.S. has said the strikes are intended to aid Kobani’s defenders. But it has been reluctant to admit the likely reason for the recent success against ISIS: Unprecedented new coordination between Washington and the main Syrian Kurdish organization, the PYD.
12. Video: Kurdish Female Fighters of Kurdistan fighting ISIS terrorist in Kobane
15 October 2014 / Live Leak
For weeks the Kurdish town of Kobane in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava) is surrounded by ISIS terrorist, brave female and male Kurdish fighters of YPG ans YPJ with light old Soviet arms fight the heavy equipped ISIS terrorist with tanks and heavy American weapons captured from Iraqi Army.
13. PFLP calls for unified revolutionary front of solidarity with the struggle of people of Kobane against ISIS
13 October 2014 / Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine expresses its solidarity with the Kurdish resistance in Kobane struggling to defend themselves and their community from the reactionary armed group, ISIS, whose entry into our region has been facilitated and supported by imperialist powers and their lackeys.
Comrade Khaled Barakat said that “All Palestinian and Arab revolutionary forces should unify their efforts to support the struggle of the Kurdish resistance in Kobane against ISIS and their imperialist supporters.”
14. Situation in Sinjar heats up: Ezidis make serious allegations against KDP
12 October 2014 / Ezidi Press
Ezidi resistance fighters tell ezidiPress editors in a phone conversation that ISIS terrorists have again surrounded Mount Sinjar, threatening thousands of people still located there. According to the fighters, over 7,000 people were remaining in the mountains because they rejected to leave their home and villages behind. Being surrounded by ISIS, their situation seems to deteriorate as Sinjar´s Protection Units themselves had to withdraw to Mount Sinjar.
15. Kobanî resistance gave rise international solidarity with West Kurdistan
16 October 2014 / Hawarnews
The Chairperson of the International League of Peoples’ Struggle (ILPS), Prof. Jose Maria Sison, has released a statement saluting the heroic resistance of the Kurdish people and their army in Rojava, the YPG/YPJ – People’s Protection Units — against the criminal gangs of the so-called Islamic State (ISIS) in Kobanî, one of the self-governing cantons of West Kurdistan (Rojava) in Syria.
16. Tamils stand with Kurds in London over Kobane
12 October 2014 / Phil Miller Info
A small group of Tamil musicians and activists supported the Kurdish march through London yesterday, expressing their solidarity with the struggle in Kobane.
17. Harrods shoppers ‘are buying into terror’
12 October 2014 / Telegraph
Customers of Harrods are being urged to boycott the department store in a symbolic protest against its Qatari owners.
Qatar, which bought Harrods in 2010, has been accused of either directly funding terrorist groups or turning a blind eye to financiers operating out of the Gulf state.
It is now facing a backlash from protesters sickened by the executions of Western hostages in Syria and the violence wreaked on the region by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil), al-Qaeda and other offshoot terror groups.
18. Obama: No ‘Quick Fixes’ Battling IS Militants
14 October 2014 / VOA
U.S. President Barack Obama says he is “deeply concerned” about Kobani, the key Syrian city that Kurdish fighters are struggling to keep from falling into Islamic State hands.
Meeting with more than 20 foreign military chiefs at a U.S. air base outside Washington Tuesday, where they discussed the fight against the militants, Obama said the crisis in Kobani underscores the threat Islamic State poses to Syria and Iraq.
COMMENT, OPINION AND ANALYSIS
19. ‘The Freedom Fight Has Returned to Turkey’
14 October 2014 / Foreign Policy
Homer’s Odyssey, Ray-Ban aviators, polished shoes, teeth-whitening gel — these are the things Seyfullah left behind in his room in southeast Turkey when he traveled to Iraq and Syria last month to fight against the Islamic State.
Seyfullah, a 33-year-old Kurd, had a successful construction company with branches in the Turkish cities of Antalya and Istanbul. His family beams that he was the most eligible and sought-after bachelor in Turkey’s southeast. But his father says Seyfullah couldn’t sit around any longer watching his fellow Kurds “being slaughtered just hours away.”
20. Turkey bombs Kurdish forces as violence threatens to spill over
16 October 2014 / Open Democracy
The humanitarian tragedy of Kobanê has raised serious questions about the future of the Kurds. The unstoppable advance of Islamic State (IS) over the last few months has already scrambled the power dynamics of the region, while Western-led air strikes have so far failed to bring IS to its knees, putting Kurdish movements in Syria and Iraq under tremendous pressure.
21. Erdogan’s final chance to make peace with the Kurds
14 October 2014 / Financial Times
Through all the mayhem engulfing the Middle East, Turkey long looked to be an anchor of stability, a beacon of moderate and modernising Islam to an Arab world in turmoil. Not any more. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who dominated Turkey as prime minister for a decade before ascending this summer to the presidency, risks plunging his country into crisis and burying his once promising peace initiative with Turkey’s restive Kurdish minority.
22. Turkey can not have its Kurdish cake and eat it too
17 October 2014 / Rudaw
Since the founding of the Turkish Republic in 1923, Ankara has demanded that the Kurds within the new state’s borders remain loyal and obedient. Their identity was of course denied and authorities mounted a ceaseless campaign of forced assimilation to their preferred language, customs and history. State ideologues maintained that everyone in Turkey was Turkish, insisting that “Turkish” referred to their citizenship and not their ethnicity. Nonetheless, the mandated language, history and cultural practices of “Turkish citizens” looked very much like that of ethnic Turks. A number of Kurdish revolts were then dismissed as the banditry of a people “who just refuses to accept civilization and the benefits the state wants to bring them.”
23. ISIS fighter in Kobanê: “Erdoğan has helped us a lot”
14 October 2014 / RoarMag
ISIS defiant as Syria’s civil war threatens to spill over into Turkey: “Erdoğan has helped us a lot, but we don’t need him anymore. Turkey is next.”
The last glimpse I catch of Kobanê, before we are forced off the hill overlooking the town by Turkish soldiers in their armored personnel carriers, are two pillars of smoke rising from the city center. Just minutes before, two loud explosions could be heard, after which clouds of dust and debris emerged from between the buildings in the town, just across the border from Turkey.
24. Kobani: What’s In A Name?
15 October 2014 / The Disorder of Things
The city of Kobani’s epic resistance against the genocidal assault of the Islamic State (IS) has entered its thirtieth day. So far the response of the western left has been generally one of solidarity. However, the left seems divided on the best way to support Kobani. Invoking anti-imperialist and anti-war principles a considerable part of the left has been shying away from demanding military and logistical support for the main defending force of the city, i.e. People’s Protection Units (YPG) and Women Protection Unites (YPJ), the armed wings of Democratic Union Party (PYD), by the US led anti-IS coalition.
25. Turkey’s passive-aggressive inaction in Kobani is anti-Kurd, anti-peace politics. And it’s dangerous
14 October 2014 / Guardian
Any second now, it seems as if Syria’s Kurdish border city of Kobani will fall. Amazingly, Kurds have been holding their ground, and western air strikes have yielded “positive results”, according to the region’s top leader, who says that “with the help of US and coalitions jets, we can expel Isis from Kobani and save the lives of these civilians”.
26. Kobane Diary: 4 Days Inside the City Fighting an Unprecedented Resistance Against ISIS
15 October 2014 / Newsweek
I chose to stay to report about the reality on the ground and tell millions of Kurds what is really happening in Kobane, as opposed to the propaganda and lies spread by Islamic State media and several other media outlets.
My reporting is for Kurdish people to know that Kobane is alive and well because the reality is that this city is keeping up an incredible and an unprecedented resistance against continued ISIS offensives that uses every means of terror in order to carry out a genocide against the people of Kobane.
27. Revolution will win in Kobanê!
9 October 2014 / IFA
It’s the 24th day of ISIS attacks on Kobanê. While people’s defending forces in all border villages are on human shield sentry for Kobanê against attacks, everyone, everywhere in the region we live, rised up not to let Kobanê fall.
28. Desperate Kobane situation is an opportunity for reconciliation
13 October 2014 / Richard Branson
Desperately sad to see the current situation in Kobane, where more than 500 people are reported dead after a month of conflict. As fighting between Islamic State militants and the Kurdish people continues on the Turkey-Syrian border, Turkey urgently needs to recognise this historic opportunity for reconciliation with the Kurdish people. By supporting the Kurds in their efforts to defend the vital border town, Turkey could help prevent a far larger massacre.
29. Kobanê and Beyond: Unfathomable Risks for Turkey and the Kurds
10 October 2014 / Carnegie Strategic Endowment
The Islamic State’s current offensive against the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobanê is interfering with the politics of many countries, triggering a massive humanitarian emergency, and raising many questions. It also brings immense political and social risks for Turkey and the Kurds. For the most part, the anti-Islamist resistance in Kobanê is provided by the Syrian Kurds of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The Western and Arab coalition that is fighting the Islamic State offers limited close air support, although the Sunni jihadists’ tactics and the absence of special forces on the ground render that support largely ineffective.
30. Turkey uses defense industry as political instrument
16 October 2014 / Al Monitor
Justice and Development Party (AKP) decision-makers, obsessed of late with the idea of the “New Turkey,” have decided that to be a powerful state Turkey has to rely on a “national government-strong army-strong national defense industry” formula.
In the AKP’s aspiration to become a powerful regional and global force, the defense industry has emerged as an important political instrument.
STATEMENTS
31. New KNK joint committee issues appeal on Kobane, 30 September 2014.
32. The Resistance of Kobane will Triumph Over Tyranny, 16 October 2014.
33. Statement by the Spokesperson of the EU High Representative on the situation in Kobane, 11 October 2014.
ACTIONS
34. Petition: Aid the Kurds of Syria in their defence against ISIS
“Right now, brave men and women are risking all to halt ISIS’ onslaught in the Kurdish region of northern Syria. They are the region’s best hope against tyranny. They face massacre if they lose.
We can help by ensuring our governments provide what they need to defend their homes: defensive and communications equipment, intelligence, food and medicines […]”
Peace in Kurdistan 