Washington DC – The United States has intensified talks with Turkey over the situation in Kobane, the Kurdish city in Syria in danger of falling to the Islamic State, the group known as ISIS or ISIL.
State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki told reporters at a daily news briefing on Tuesday that US Secretary of State John Kerry had been speaking to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu by phone.
"Secretary Kerry spoke with Prime Minister Davutoglu last night and again briefly this morning,” Psaki said. “Their conversation is -- was -- broadly about the challenges we’re all facing with the threat of ISIL, and also, certainly, the situation in Kobane,” she added.
"It’s horrific for everyone to watch in real time what’s happening in Kobane, and they talked about that,” she said.
US and partner jets intensified airstrikes on ISIS positions around Kobane on Tuesday, hours after the jihadists breached city lines. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned that “Kobane is about to fall.”
According to the State Department, Brett McGurk, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran, will be in Turkey later this week to discuss Turkey’s role in the US-led coalition against ISIS.
The Turkish deputy Prime Minister Yalcın Akdogan said on Tuesday that Ankara has demanded the US step-up its airstrikes around Kobane to prevent it from falling to “terrorists.”
“Our government and related institutions have underlined the necessity to intensify aerial bombings in a more active and effective way through contacts with US officials until late into yesterday night,” Akdogan was quoted as saying by the Hurriyet Daily.
On Tuesday, thousands of Kurds took to the streets in Turkey’s Kurdish cities and towns, including Istanbul, in support of Kobane. Clashes between protestors and police have led to several deaths and many wounded. Turkish officials have declared a curfew in several Kurdish cities, including Diyarbakir, Wan and Batman as measures to curtail unrest in the country.
The US has stepped up airstrikes around Kobane since early Tuesday to ease pressure on the Kurdish fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), who have been defending the border town.
“Certainly, the last several days, we have conducted airstrikes in and around Kobane to try to relieve some of that pressure,” the Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. Kirby said during Tuesday’s press briefing.
“We're constantly monitoring it and if we believe an airstrike can be effective, and if we believe that we can conduct it in such a way that we're not going to cause any greater damage or civilian casualties, then I think you can see by just dint of our record here that we're going to do it,” Kirby said.
He added that, while the US military is looking at a wider picture of how to defeat ISIS, “That doesn't mean that we are going to turn a blind eye to what's going on at Kobane or anywhere else.”
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