Government wants Kobane to remain Kurdish: HDP

Okan Konuralp ANKARA

‘This is what Prime Minister Davutoğlu told us: We do not want Kobane to be taken by ISIL,’ HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş tells Hürriyet. AA Photo

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said he does not want Kobane to end up in the hands of the jihadists, the co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has said.

Kobane is the border town where the Kurdish forces and Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants have been clashing.

“This is what Prime Minister Davutoğlu told us: We do not want Kobane to be taken by ISIL,” HDP co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş told Hürriyet Oct. 2 in a reference to a meeting by Davutoğlu a day earlier.

“‘We think ISIL should be eradicated from both the environs of Kobane and the other regions in Iraq’ he added. These are the first expressions of a change of stance by the government,” Demirtaş said.
However, he called for practical implementations of such an approach, highlighting the importance of cutting the logistics inflow to the jihadists.

The HDP has been defending its stance that the government was not sincere in fighting against ISIL.
ISIL militants have besieged Kobane for more than two weeks, sending more than 150,000 Syrian Kurds fleeing to Turkey.

Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has said the peace talks between his group and the Turkish government will come to an end if ISIL militants are allowed to carry out a massacre in the predominantly Kurdish town on the Syrian border.

“If this massacre attempt achieves its goal, it will end the process,” Öcalan said in a statement released by the delegation that visited him in jail on Oct. 1.

The PKK is backing the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in their fight against the ISIL insurgents in Kobane.