Abrupt shift: Turkey allows Kurdish peshmerga to cross Turkish territory to help in Kobani’s defense

The Guardian reports that both developments – the U.S. directly providing military aid to the Kurds, and the decision by Turkey to allow Kurdish peshmerga fighters to cross Turkey on their way to Kobani — followed a substantial increase in the number of air strikes against ISIS forces.

Guided in by U.S. Special Forces and by Kurdish spotters operating deep inside Kobani, the air strikes have inflicted heavy damage on ISIS forces and materiel in an around Kobani, and have decimated the ISIS command, forcing the Islamist organization increasingly to rely on untested and inexperienced cadres who have demonstrated great difficulties commanding formations and holding ground.

Military analysts say the ISIS has lost between 400 and 500 men in the last four days of fighting (and if the typical ratio of three wounded fighters for every fighter killed holds, this means that ISIS also suffered more than 1,000 injured fighters), and that much of the heavy weaponry it had brought to the battle from the Iraqi military stockpile it had looted was destroyed in the U.S. air strikes.

“It is being much more difficult for them,” a Western diplomat based in the region told the Guardian. “If what has been delivered can make a measurable difference then they can’t win. They will need to recalibrate their commitment.”

ISIS has gambled that it could take Kobani, the fourth largest Kurdish town in Syria, in the process achieving a major military and public relations coup. ISIS was not unreasonable in its assumptions.

• Turkey refused to help the Kurds defend the town, and also prevented any help from reaching the Kurds. The Kurdish defenders of Kobani belong to the PDY faction, the Syrian branch of the pro-Kurdish independence PKK which Turkey, and also the United States and the EU, regard as a terrorist organization. The success of ISIS serves Turkey’s regional goals, and if Kobani fell to ISIS, it would have been ideal from Turkey’s perspective: it would have been a crushing blow to the PDY and its sister organization PKK; thousands – perhaps even tens of thousands – of pro-PKK Kurdish civilians would have been killed, and those Kurds remaining alive would have been subdued by ISIS. The success in Kobani would have emboldened ISIS to take on another enemy of Turkey – Bashar al-Assad and his Alawyte regime in Damascus – and other adversaries of Turkey in the region (see “Turkish jets bomb Kurdish positions”).
• While Turkey was preventing any help from reaching Kobani, the United States was waiting for the post-Maliki government in Baghdad to make a serious offer to Iraq’s Sunnis and form a truly inclusive government in Baghdad. The new Iraq government insisted that any aid to the Kurds should go through Baghdad, but the United States refused to use the services of the Iraqi government until that government became more inclusive. ISIS could not be faulted for thinking that an inclusive government in Baghdad was a long way off, and that taking Kobani would happen long before such a government is formed, if at all.

In the face of a deteriorating military situation in Kobani, Obama decided to ignore both Ankara and Baghdad and their parochial preoccupations. U.S. Special Forces were sent into Kobani where, together with trained Kurdish forces, they could serve as spotters for U.S. air strikes, making these strikes much more effective. On Monday, the United States began to drop military supplies directly to the Kurds.

Kurdish fighters told the Guardian that the weapons drops have boosted morale and, if continued, will help them hold back the ISIS attacks.

Another fighter, who identified himself as Ameen, told the newspaper: “The game has changed now. After the Americans provided us with weapons, we turned from defending the city to attacking Isis. Now we are no longer playing the defensive in this war. I believe the next couple of days will bring us victory.

“In the first week of the air strikes, the Americans were bombing empty Isis headquarters. Now, it is different. They are more accurate and they know the right places to bomb.”

Mahmoud Haji Omar, a member of the peshmerga committee in the Kurdistan parliament, confirmed that peshmerga troops were preparing to deploy to Kobani: “We are planning to send a number of peshmerga forces to go and fight in Kobani against (ISIS). We are currently selecting the fighters that will be going to Kobani. Turkey has agreed to give passage as long as the peshmerga fighters bring back the weapons that they take in to Kobani.”

Earlier on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry, who was in Indonesia for the swearing in of the new Indonesian president, said the Obama administration decided to airdrop weapons and ammunitions to “valiant” Kurds because it would be “irresponsible” and “morally very difficult” not to support them.

Kerry said the United States understood Turkey’s concerns about supplying the Kurds, but said the situation is such in Kobani that direct U.S. military aid to the Kurds was considered absolutely necessary in a “crisis moment.”

“Let me say very respectfully to our allies the Turks that we understand fully the fundamentals of their opposition and ours to any kind of terrorist group and particularly obviously the challenges they face with respect [to] the PKK,” Kerry said. “But we have undertaken a coalition effort to degrade and destroy ISIL [ISIS], and it is presenting itself in major numbers in this place called Kobani.”

Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavusoğlu said yesterday that the decision to allow the peshmerga forces to pass through Turkish territory was in line with a wider regional effort to fend off ISIS.

“We want the region to be cleared of all threats. We assess the military and medical materials aid provided by our Iraqi Kurdish brothers and airdropped by the United States to all forces defending Kobani in this framework,” he said. “There are seven or eight groups that are fighting together with the PYD [the Democratic Union party and PKK ally] [in Syria].”

Analysts note that the policy shift in Ankara was also motivated by a series of violent protests which shook Turkey two weeks ago in response to the government’s inaction over the crisis in Kobani. Tacitly supporting ISIS so the Islamist organization would serve Turkey’s regional interests may look on paper as a clever policy, but 20 percent of Turkey’s population is Kurdish, so allowing a major Kurdish town to fall to Islamist fanatics who promised they would kill every Kurd who did not adopt ISIS’s version of Islam is a different story.

Mesut Yegen, a historian of the Kurdish issue, told the Guardian that Turkey could not risk the fall of Kobani [to ISIS]: “The events from two weeks ago clearly showed that if Kobani should fall, the peace process [between Turkey and the Kurds in Turkey] would end. The Turkish government wanted to test how people [in Turkey] would react, and they saw what would have happened [if the Turkish government would have allowed Kobani to fall]. Turkey can no longer be seen as watching the drama in Kobani unfold without doing anything.”

Halil M. Karaveli, an expert on Turkey and a senior fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Stockholm, told the New York Times that “Opening a passage for the peshmerga creates the impression that Turkey has changed its stance, and is on board with the coalition against ISIS…. But this move is actually in Turkey’s own interests,” since the peshmerga would counterbalance the Kurdish groups in Kobani that Turkey opposes, such as the PYD.