Kobane: IS and Syria Kurds in fierce gun battles

[Baclava]

3. ..and then there's this...'Turkey can save Kobane from ISIL—for a price'

As Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters surround the Syrian-Kurdish enclave of Kobane on three sides and civilians flee en masse toward the tightly sealed border with Turkey, Ankara sees an opportunity: Much-needed ground reinforcements to save Kobane will have to either come from or transit through Turkey, which may be able to leverage its long-awaited participation in the U.S.-led coalition against ISIL for its own purposes.

Despite considerable misgivings about bailing out Kobane’s ruling PYD — the armed sister party of the Turkey-based Kurdish PKK insurgency, which Ankara and Washington both regard as a "terrorist" organization — the brutality that many fear would ensue if the town of 40,000 falls to ISIL has put Ankara under both humanitarian and political pressure to send in troops. U.S.-Arab airstrikes have not been enough to boost the struggling Kurdish ground forces, which have ordered an evacuation of Kobane and are desperately pleading for help.

Speaking Tuesday at one of Turkey’s several Syrian refugee camps in the southern city of Gaziantep, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told residents that Kobane was about to fall and seemed to name his terms for saving it.

Turkey, Erdogan said, wants a more robust coalition strategy in Syria that includes empowering the moderate rebels and imposing a no-fly zone over Syria and buffer zone on the ground to help protect Turkey’s borders and stem the flow of refugees.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/10/7/turkey-kobane-intervention.html