WASHINGTON DC - In a clear sign of further cracks in US-Turkish ties, the US Department of State said Monday it backs Erbil’s move to send more arms to Kobane, the same day the Turkish president railed against too much international attention to the besieged Syrian-Kurdish town.
A group of 150 Peshmerga fighters from the Kurdistan Region are fighting alongside Syrian-Kurdish defenders who have resisted an overrun by the Islamic State, the jihadi group most commonly known as ISIS or ISIL.
“We support what they’re (Kurds) – their help in fighting back against ISIL in Kobane, yes,” said the US State Department Spokesperson Jen Psaki, responding to a reporter’s question about whether the US supports the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) decision to resupply Kurdish fighters in Kobane.
Major general Karzan Shaqlawai of the Peshmerga Ministry told Rudaw that a new resupply convoy of arms was on its way to Kobane with weapons for the Peshmerga and Syrian People’s Protection Units (YPG). They said the convoy was going through Turkey.
Turkey, a NATO ally, on Monday lashed out the US for providing the Kurdish defenders in Kobane with weapons and ammunition.
“We have clearly expressed our views on Kobane to the US,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying.
“We wouldn’t find it appropriate for an ally country to give arms to a group which we believe is related to terror,” Erdogan was quoted as saying by Turkey’s Hurriyet daily. “Why does Kobane have this strategic importance?”
Turkey’s problem is with the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the main force in Syrian Kurdistan, and its links with Turkey’s own outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which commands overwhelming respect among Kurds in Turkey for a three-decade war for autonomy.
Responding to Erdogan’s comments, Psaki said that, “We’ve been discussing this issue with the Turkish Government for weeks." She said the US is working closely with the Kurds to push back ISIS in Iraq.
US and coalition jets have been conducting airstrikes in Iraq and Syria to push back ISIS since the summer, and arms have poured in for the Peshmerga from the US and other Western countries.
Psaki explained that the Kurds were “very well equipped."
She added that the US has “provided a great range of – a great deal of assistance to Kurdish forces, including 30 million rounds of light and heavy machine gun ammunition, 12,000 assault rifles, 15,000 hand grenades, 44,000 mortar rounds, and I could go on. And there are many other countries that have provided a great deal of material assistance to them as well.”
“They (Kurds) also, as you probably know, already have significant numbers of heavy weapons, including over a hundred tanks and hundreds of other armored vehicles and artillery systems. So they’re very well equipped, and many countries have increased their assistance to the Kurds in Iraq over the course of the last several months,” she explained.
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