Amid its ongoing advance in Iraq, the Islamic State [IS, formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham] moved some of its weapons to Syria and launched an extensive offensive on [the Kurdish city of] Kobani last week.

On July 9, more than a thousand IS militants mounted an attack on positions of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), seeking to seize the villages surrounding Kobani and then the city itself. The offensive began early in the morning as IS militants, moving with heavy weaponry from their bases in Raqqa and Tell Abyad, attacked YPG positions in the village of Evdiko. The Syrian-based ANHA agency reported that the clashes spilled over to a wide area after the YPG responded to the attack and that IS’s objective was to capture Kobani.

Ibrahim Muslim from the Tell Abyad Civic Society Union said that more than a thousand IS members took part in the attack on Evdiko alone. Other villages around Kobani were also targeted with tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, anti-aircraft guns and mortars. As the fighting between IS and the YPG spread to wide areas, more than a hundred IS members were reportedly killed and many others injured. No information was immediately available on YPG casualties. Four tanks were reportedly destroyed in the clashes over the past week. Wounded militants were carried on tanks to Raqqa and Tell Abyad.

Calls for mobilization

The leadership of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) issued a written statement urging all Kurds to join the fight against IS. “We call especially on the patriotic youth of North Kurdistan [Turkey’s southeast] and on all our people and the resistance youth of the South [Iraqi Kurdistan], Rojava [Syria’s Kurdish region] and East Kurdistan [Iran’s Kurdish region] to heed the Kobani canton’s mobilization call, consider it a duty of national honor and respond with strong participation,” the KCK appeal said.

Border demonstration

As the IS offensive on Rojava’s Kobani canton intensified and threatened the city itself, the [pro-Kurdish] People's Democracy Party (HDP) and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) held a demonstration on the Turkish side of the border on July 9. Led by HDP Co-chair Figen Yuksekdag and parliament members, the crowd marched from Suruc to the border, where Yuksekdag made a press statement.

Stressing that Kobani was under a dark, merciless blockade, she said: “The backward and murderous IS gang has been able to use conveniently Turkish territory as a logistical base and move easily back and forth across the border. Those gangs have been given this opportunity directly by the Turkish state and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. The people, however, are unable to cross the same borders. First and foremost, we urge the Turkish state to abandon immediately its current attitudes which support war and bloodshed, facilitate massacres and constitute a crime against humanity against civilian people. If these borders are perforated each and every day by the sovereign powers and proponents of war, they should never be barriers for the people as well. According to the information we have, they [IS] have been using the Turkish border from many spots in the latest developments. Two days ago, we obtained information that their wounded were brought to Hatay. Wounded members of the IS gangs have been brought to the Mustafa Kemal University Hospital in Hatay and treated there. We have information that this is still continuing.”

The HDP launched a “tent protest” along the Rojava border until the IS attack on Kobani ends. Parliament members were among the demonstrators who started the vigil in the tents.

‘If I were young I would have fought against IS’

The BDP’s Mardin Mayor Ahmet Turk said, “If I were young, I would have joined the ranks of my people to fight the IS gangs.” He urged the [Iraqi] Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and all other Kurdish organizations to put aside their ideological and political differences and support the Kobani resistance. “Whatever Kirkuk means for the Kurds, Kobani means the same,” he said. Turk warned that Kobani’s fall would mean “the fall of all parts of Kurdistan,” and stressed that Kurds were fighting for their honor in Kobani.