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Turkey locks down border after refugee surge from Syria fleeing Islamic State Turkey breaks up crowds at Syrian border protesting Islamic State advances
(about 3 hours later)
BEIRUT — Turkish paramilitary forces locked down stretches of the Syrian border Monday after facing a flood of more than 130,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the latest advance by Islamic State militants. BEIRUT — Turkish troops fired tear gas and water cannons Monday to disperse crowds near Suruc, Turkey, on the Syrian border, where Turkish and Syrian Kurds have been demonstrating against the Islamic State’s latest offensive in Syria.
The move by Turkey reflects desperation on both sides of the frontier. At least 130,000 refugees have poured into Turkey over the past three days, fleeing the militants’ onslaught.
Turkey has been overwhelmed by more than 1.5 million people seeking haven from the Syrian civil war, and officials fear another humanitarian crisis on Turkish territory. Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus, said that at least 130,000 additional refugees have poured across the Syrian border in the past three days. The militants have taken more than 60 villages in recent days as they push toward the border town of Ayn al-Arab, or Kobane in Kurdish. Taking Kobane would give the militants control of a large stretch of the Syrian-Turkish frontier — and another potential route for Islamic State recruits to enter Syria.
In Syria’s Kurdish region, the push by the Islamic State has exposed weaknesses in Kurdish defenses and could leave civilians nowhere to run if the border remains sealed. “An uncontrollable force at the other side of the border is attacking civilians,” Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Numan Kurtulmus, said of the Islamic State group.
U.S.-led forces have stepped up air attacks on Islamic State targets in Iraq, but are deeply divided over whether to expand the offensive to Syria — where President Bashar al-Assad is battling rebels in a separate conflict that began more than three years ago. While it seems that Turkey would have the most to lose if the Islamic State expanded its control of this frontier, Ankara has taken little action, instead preventing Turkish Kurdish fighters from entering Kobane to help with its defense, according to Syrian Kurds.
“The official borders with Turkey are closed by the Turkish authorities,” said Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the People’s Protection Units, one of the Kurdish groups fighting the Islamic State. “However, the refugees are crossing through wire fences in some areas.” Hundreds of men from the Turkish Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have tried to cross into Syria. “Turkey is preventing, not only PKK, but all Kurdish men from entering Syria,” said Redur Xelil, a spokesman for the People’s Protection Units (YGP), one of the Syrian Kurdish groups fighting the Islamic State. “But the men are entering illegally through some crossings.”
At one closed border crossing, marked by a barbed wire barrier, a line of Turkish paramilitary police stood guard, the Reuters news agency reported. Some refugees described Islamic State fighters conducting indiscriminate killings as they overran villages, the report said. The claims could not be independently verified. The Turkish government says it is illegal for fighters to enter Syria through its borders, but hundreds of foreign combatants have transited through Turkey in the past three years to join the war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who Turkey has said must go. That has led to accusations that Turkey has fostered the growth of the Islamic State. Turkey has denied this, but has a long history of conflict with the autonomy-seeking Kurds and has been battling its own Kurdish separatists for decades.
NATO-member Turkey has periodically closed border crossings since the Islamic State militants began taking over Syrian Kurdish villages Sept. 16 as they move toward the strategic border town of Ayn al-Arab, or Kobane in Kurdish. Taking Kobane would give the Islamic State control of a large swath of the Syrian-Turkish frontier — and another potential route for Islamic State recruits. “The reality is that Turkey is siding with ISIS,” said Xelil, using the acronym for the group’s previous name, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
But Kurdish Syrian fighters claimed that they have halted — at least for the moment — the advance of the militants, who have taken more than 60 Kurdish Syrian villages in the past week. Kurdish spokesman Xelil said fighting still flared on three fronts. Kurdish fighters managed to halt the militants’ advance Monday, but fierce fighting continued on several fronts. Kurdish Syrian forces say their weapons are no match for the militants’ arsenal, looted from fleeing Iraqi national troops in June. Kurdish leaders have been calling on the international community for support to defend the border against the militants, as well as for fighters from Turkey to join them and defend the Kurdish villages.
Kurdish Syrian forces also worry that they could be outgunned. The Islamic State arsenal includes U.S.-made weapons looted from fleeing Iraqi national troops in June. Kurds, both in Syria and Iraq, have called for international support to defend the border area. “Turkey does not have a problem with ISIS,” Xelil said. “Sometimes they facilitate the transit of their fighters and even open the hospitals for their injured, while they do not allow [our] injured to cross and use their hospitals.”
“An uncontrollable force at the other side of the border is attacking civilians,” said Kurtulmus, Turkey’s deputy prime minister. “The extent of the disaster is worse than a natural disaster.” As Assad has battled to protect his regime in Damascus, the Syrian Kurds in the country’s north have taken the opportunity to increase their autonomy, much to the dislike of Turkey.
The Kurdish issue adds another level of political sensitivity for Turkey, which for decades had battled a separatist movement in its own large Kurdish-dominated region. Turkish leaders worry that the Islamic State threat could stir bids for greater unity and coordination by Kurds, whose heartland spreads across Turkey, Syria and Iran. “The Turks are really happy seeing the Islamic State demolishing the political and administrative system, the self-governing system, that the Kurds were in the process of building in Kurdish areas in northern Syria,” said Hoshang Waziri, an Iraqi Kurdish analyst and writer who spent years in Syria. “Turkey much prefers an Islamic State neighbor over a semi-PKK-led Kurdish state.”
In recent years, as Assad battled to protect his regime in Damascus, the Syrian Kurds have increased their autonomy and — to some degree — have protected their enclave from the war. But now, large areas have been evacuated amid growing fears of the Islamic State’s onslaught. While Turkey is getting comfortable with the idea of an independent Iraqi Kurdish state — in part by building economic relations with the enclave — the Turks have seen autonomy for Syrian Kurds as a threat. Unlike the Iraqi Kurdish leadership, Syrian Kurds have a close relationship with the Turkish PKK Kurds who have been fighting Turkey for independence.
The U.N. refugee agency said Sunday that Turkey was preparing for the possibility of hundreds of thousands of new refugees. That could be changing as Turkey increasingly sees the threat posed by the expansionist Sunni militants of the Islamic State. Those leading the charge for this new caliphate have made it clear that the borders that now govern the Middle East are irrelevant for the caliph and the militants.
“I don’t think in the last three and a half years we have seen 100,000 people crossing in two days, and so this is a bit of a measure of how the situation is unfolding,” the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Turkey, Carol Batchelor, told Reuters. Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute, says the fact that Ankara has looked the other way as Turkish Kurds slip across the border to fight with their brethren means this shift is already happening.
The United Nations said its refugee assistance campaign is underfunded, and it has appealed to the international community for more money. “I think we are going in that direction,” Cagaptay said. Despite a cease-fire and ongoing talks between the Turkish-Kurdish PKK leaders and the Turkish government, Turkey still designates the group a terrorist organization.
Turkey is home to more than 1.5 million Syrian refugees. Like most of Syria’s neighbors, Turkey is struggling with the humanitarian spillover from Syria’s civil war and now the Islamic State surge. More than 3 million Syrians have sought refuge in neighboring states, including Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. However, decades of battles between the groups could be ended by the recognition of a common enemy, Cagaptay said. The Kurds are now a clear target, and Turkey would share a 500-mile border with the militants if the Kurdish enclaves fell to the Islamic State.
On Sunday, Turkish border troops used tear gas and water cannons to disperse crowds on the border reportedly demonstrating in solidarity with the Kurdish Syrian militia battling the Islamic State fighters. “There is only one element missing,” he said. “It would require the PKK to entirely end its fight against Turkey.”
A day earlier, the Islamic State freed 46 Turks, including Turkey’s consul general in the Iraqi city of Mosul. But Turkey appears reluctant to engage in frontline battles against the militants.
While the United States and other allies insist that there are no plans to commit ground troops, some political and military figures have suggested that airstrikes alone may not be enough. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, writing on the Web site of his Faith Foundation, acknowledged that there is “no appetite” in the West to send ground forces, but it should not be ruled out “if it is absolutely necessary.”
Murphy reported from Washington. Suzan Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report.Murphy reported from Washington. Suzan Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report.