ISIS fighter in Kobanê: “Erdoğan has helped us a lot, but we don’t need him anymore. Turkey is next."

Prophetic words were spoken that day

ISIS fighter in Kobanê: “Erdoğan has helped us a lot, but we don’t need him anymore. Turkey is next." (Roarmag).

“Kobanê is everything,” the PKK commander’s brother states. “Kobanê is the red line: for the PKK, for Öcalan, for the Kurdish people, for everyone. Without Kobanê we can’t talk about anything.”

The general opinion of the Kurds and their supporters here at the border is that the Turkish government has had a hand in ISIS’ assault on Kobanê. 

This rumor was confirmed by a member of ISIS with whom we spoke on the phone, a mere two hundred meters from the border with Syria.

My friend Murat and I were walking through the fields when we met a man who explained to us that he had just escaped from Kobanê. He told us how, two days before, he had tried to call a friend who was fighting with the Women’s Defense Forces. But instead of his friend answering, an unknown man picked up the phone and told him that his friend was dead — killed by ISIS — and that this phone now belonged to him.

Murat encouraged the man to try and call the number again, and after it rang a number of times, the same man picked up. 

Our friend spoke to the ISIS fighter for a while, in Arabic, and then asked him: “how is your friend Erdoğan doing?” The reply confirmed what many here have been suspecting all along: “Erdoğan has helped us a lot in the past. He has given us Kobanê. But now we don’t need him anymore. After Kobanê, Turkey is next!”

The PKK’s October 15 deadline is approaching fast, and with the border still closed for any material or logistical support for the Kurdish defenders of the city, the likelihood of a new civil war in Turkey becomes greater every day. The men of Measêr would have preferred a political solution over violence, but realize that if the Turkish government continues to stand by idly, blocking the border as their comrades in Kobanê are being slaughtered at the hands of ISIS, they will not be left with much choice.

It therefore appears that the Syrian civil war is rapidly spilling over into Turkey, not in the last place because the majority of YPG fighters in Kobanê are reportedly from the PKK, aiding their Syrian comrades in the fight against ISIS. As news emerges of fresh Turkish airstrikes on PKK positions in the southeast of the country, it is clear that the ceasefire is rapidly breaking down. As such, the coming days will be decisive for the future of the Turkish-Kurdish peace process.

Unless the Turkish government suddenly makes a dramatic turn, opening the border crossing to Kobanê and supporting the Kurdish resistance against ISIS, it will be difficult to prevent a further escalation of violence in the region.Read the full story here.

Iskender Doğu is an Istanbul-based freelance writer, activist and an editor for ROAR Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter via @Le_Frique.