- Title: TURKEY: Kurdish refugees hope to return home one day
- Date: 11th October 2014
- Summary: SURUC, TURKEY (OCTOBER 11, 2014) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF KURDISH REFUGEES IN CAMP GIRL SITTING NEXT TO LUGGAGE AND BELONGINGS REFUGEES WALKING AMONGST TENTS REFUGEES SITTING OUTSIDE TENT (SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) KURDISH SYRIAN REFUGEE, MOHAMMED, SAYING: "We hope we can return tomorrow but the situation is deteriorating. They (Islamist militants) are in Ayn al-Arab (Kobani) now.
- Embargoed: 26th October 2014 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Turkey
- Country: Turkey
- Topics: General,People
- Reuters ID: LVA7ON93Q2SB00UOYQGFYKB1O0V6
- Story Text: Syria's ethnic Kurds, staying at refugee camps in southeast Turkey, are keeping their expectations low about whether they will be able to return home on Saturday as intense fighting between Islamic State fighters and outgunned Kurdish forces in the streets of Kobani are heard from across the border.
The refugees spoke on saturday (October 11), a day after the United Nations warned thousands of people are likely to be massacred if Kobani falls to Islamic State fighters. Militants fought deeper into the besieged Syrian Kurdish town in full view of Turkish tanks that have done nothing to intervene.
U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said on Friday (October 10) Kobani could suffer the same fate as the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where 8,000 Muslims were murdered by Serbs in 1995, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two, while U.N. peacekeepers failed to protect them.
Hundreds of refugees are trying to adjust to life in refugee camps, such as the one in the southeast border town of Suruc. Although they hope to one day return to their home, they are wary that it could be sometime before it will be safe to return.
"We hope we can return tomorrow but the situation is deteriorating. They (Islamist militants) are in Ayn al-Arab (Kobani) now. War jets are shelling the town. We want to return now but if the situation will remain as it is, we will stay here at least a year. Even if we return we won't find a house to live in," said Mohammed, one of the refugees.
Warplanes roared above Kobani on Friday and the western edge of town was hit by an air strike, apparently by U.S.-led coalition jets.
But even as the United States has increased its bombing of Islamic State targets in the area, it has acknowledged that its air support is unlikely to be enough to save the city from falling.
For many refugees, such as Mustafa, one of the refugees, Kobani will fall to IS militants unless the United States and her NATO ally Turkey step up their support of the Kurdish forces fighting Islamic State.
"If the United States helps us, we could return. If the United States is willing to help, not like Erdogan, we could return today but countries are just looking at us. What they are waiting for, I don't know. They watch to see what will happen," Mustafa said.
"You see the situation here and people are not in good shape. People die, including children. We are homeless," he added.
The plight of mainly Kurdish Kobani has unleashed the worst street violence in years in Turkey, which has 15 million Kurds of its own. Turkish Kurds have risen up since Tuesday against President Tayyip Erdogan's government, which they accuse of allowing their kin to be slaughtered.
At least 33 people have been killed in three days of riots across the mainly Kurdish southeast, including two police officers shot dead in an apparent attempt to assassinate a police chief. The police chief was wounded.
In Washington, the U.S. State Department said Turkey has agreed to support the training and equipping of moderate opposition groups in Syria and that a U.S. military planning team would visit Ankara next week to further discuss the matter.
The United States has been pressing Turkey to join the fight against Islamic State.
The Middle East has been transformed in recent months by Islamic State, a Sunni militant group that has seized swathes of Syria and Iraq, crucifying and beheading prisoners and ordering non-Muslims and Shi'ites to convert or die.
The United States has been building a military coalition to fight the group, an effort that requires intervening in both Iraq and Syria, countries with complex multi-sided civil wars in which nearly every state in the region has allies and enemies.
International attention has focused on Turkey, a NATO member with the biggest army in the region, which has absorbed 1.2 million Syrian refugees, including 200,000 from Kobani in the last few weeks.
Erdogan has so far refused to join the military coalition against Islamic State or use force to protect Kobani.
Turkey says it would join an international coalition to fight against Islamic State only if the alliance also confronts Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2014. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None