Istanbul: Turkey will do whatever it can to prevent the predominantly Kurdish town of Ain Al Arab, near its border with Syria, falling to Daesh insurgents, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said late on Thursday.
Just hours before Davutoglu’s comment, parliament gave the government powers to order cross-border military incursions against Daesh, and to allow foreign coalition forces to launch similar operations from Turkish territory. The town is known as Kobani in Kurdish.
“We wouldn’t want Kobani to fall. We’ll do whatever we can to prevent this from happening,” Davutoglu said in a discussion with journalists broadcast on the Haber television station.
“No other country has the capacity to affect the developments in Syria and Iraq. No other country will be affected like us either,” he said.
Daesh fighters advanced to within a few kilometres of the centre of Ain Al Arab on three sides on Thursday, having taken control of hundreds of villages around the town in recent weeks, and sending more than 150,000 Syrian Kurds fleeing to Turkey.
Their advance to within clear sight of Turkish military positions on the border has piled pressure on the Nato member to take a more robust position against the Islamist insurgents.
But Ankara remains hesitant, fearing military intervention could deepen the insecurity on its border by strengthening Syrian President Bashar Al Assad and bolstering Kurdish fighters linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has waged a three-decade insurgency against the Turkish state.
Jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan said on Wednesday that peace talks between his group and the Turkish state will come to an end if Daesh militants are allowed to carry out a massacre in Kobani.
