Turkey will try to stop ISIL taking Kurdish border town: PM Davutoğlu

ISTANBUL - Agence France-Presse

AFP Photo

Turkey will do whatever it can to prevent the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobane, near its border with Syria, falling to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said late on Oct. 2.
   
Just hours before Davutoğlu's comment, parliament gave the government powers to order cross-border military incursions against ISIL, and to allow foreign coalition forces to launch similar operations from Turkish territory.
   
"We wouldn't want Kobane to fall. We'll do whatever we can to prevent this from happening," Davutoğlu said in a discussion with journalists.
   
"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.
  
ISIL fighters advanced to within a few kilometres of the centre of Kobane 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.