BAGHDAD — The Kurds of Syria and Iraq have become a major focal point in the war against the Islamic State group, with Kurdish populations in both countries coming under significant threat by the terrorists’ lightening advance.
Syrian and Iraqi Kurds took part in cross-border operations to help rescue tens of thousands of displaced people from the minority Yazidi group from Iraq’s Sinjar Mountain in August. In Turkey, Kurds are pressing the government in Ankara to help their brethren in Syria.
Cooperation between Kurds in these countries underscores their loyalty to the shared dream of establishing an independent and unified Kurdistan, or Land of the Kurds — and not to the nations in which they live.
Who are the Kurds?
They are an ethnic group with their own language and their own customs whose nomadic past have dispersed across mostly Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia. After the collapse of the Ottoman and Qajar empires, the creation of an independent Kurdistan was rejected by Iraq, Iran and Turkey, making them the largest stateless minority group in the world.
What is their role in Turkey?
Turkey is home to an estimated 15 million Kurds, mostly Sunni Muslim. An insurgent group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has fought a three-decade war, initially for independence and later for autonomy and greater rights for Kurds. Turkey is also engaged in peace talks with PKK’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, but Kurds warn that would end if the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobani falls.
Where do they stand in Iraq?
Five million Iraqi Kurds are in two main factions: the Kurdistan Democratic Party, led by Kurdish Regional Government President Massoud Barzani, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by former Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. The factions fought a bloody war for power over northern Iraq in the mid-1990s, before agreeing to a power-sharing deal in 1998. The Kurdish military, known as the Peshmerga, claimed control of the oil-rich city of Kirkuk just days after the Islamic State group advanced across northern Iraq.
Where do the Kurds stand in Syria?
Kurds are the largest ethnic minority in Syria, making up more than 10 percent of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million, carving out a semi-autonomous territory in the north as overstretched government troops abandoned the region to focus on defending Damascus.
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Border town about to fall, Turkey president warns • MURSITPINAR, Turkey — Islamic State fighters were poised to capture a strategic Syrian town on the Turkish border, Turkey’s president warned Tuesday, even as Kurdish forces battled to expel the extremists from footholds on the outskirts.
Outgunned Kurdish fighters struggling to defend Kobani got a small boost from a series of U.S.-led airstrikes against the militants that sent huge columns of black smoke into the sky. Limited coalition strikes have done little to blunt the Islamic State group’s three-week offensive, and its fighters have relentlessly shelled the town in preparation for a final assault.
Warning that the aerial campaign alone was not enough to halt the Islamic State group’s advance, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for greater cooperation with the Syrian opposition, which is fighting both the extremists and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“Kobani is about to fall,” Erdogan told Syrian refugees near the border.
Turkish tanks and other ground forces have been stationed along the border within a few hundred yards of the fighting in Kobani but have not intervened.
The Associated Press
