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Obama said his “most trusted,” “favorite ally” in the world is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — the man responsible for throwing off the modern era of Ataturk and returning Turkey to the backward savage system of the oppression and subjugation of Islamic rule. “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” Turkish PM Recip Erdogan Turkish President and former Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan thinks of himself as a caliph, and is looking at Syria with imperial ambitions (more). President Assad of Syria said, “[Erdoğan] personally thinks that he...

Western airstrikes and Kurdish resistance appear to have slowed the Islamic State’s takeover of Kobani, a Syrian town on the border with Turkey, for now. But the situation in the area, where Syrian Kurdish rebels have been steadily losing ground to the jihadists, demonstrates the inadequacy and incoherence of President Obama’s strategy. The Obama administration has said that losing Kobani isn’t a big setback for the fight against the Islamic State. But if our goal is to degrade and destroy the group, it is. The president has prioritized driving the jihadists out of Iraq, but this is senseless when the...

SURUC, Turkey (AP) -- Kurdish militiamen are putting up a fierce fight to defend a Syrian town near the border with Turkey but are struggling to repel the Islamic State group, which is advancing and pushing in from two sides, Syrian activists and Kurdish officials said Saturday. The battle for Kobani is still raging despite more than two weeks of airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition targeting the militants in and around the town. The strikes, which are aimed at rolling back the militants' gains, appear to have done little to blunt their onslaught on Kobani, which began in mid-September. Just...

According to Secretary of State John Kerry, preventing the fall of the Kurdish town of Kobani, “was not a strategic objective for the United States.” Across town in D.C. Barack Obama’s White House Press Secretary admitted that the advances made by the Islamic State’s (ISIS) military thugs represented a setback for Obama’s “leading from behind policy.” It has been Obama’s strategy to use and then “roll back” American combat aircraft without committing ground forces; his fancy way of doing very little to nothing. White House spokesman Josh Earnest went on to state “Our strategy [in Syria] is reliant on something...

Ethnic Kurds clashed overnight with alleged members of a hardline Islamist movement in Hamburg last night, as ISIS clashes spread far from Syria. Police in the northern German city say 14 people were injured overnight in the violence involving hundreds of demonstrators before riot police were able to quell the disturbance. Police spokesman Karina Sadowsky said this morning that fighting began after hundreds of Kurds held a protest against the Islamic State group... ...Last night's violence in Germany came as at least nine Kurdish demonstrators were killed by police in Turkey as demonstrations against the government's failure to help Syrian...

KURDISH FIGHTERS THWARTED a bid by Islamic State group jihadists to advance into the centre of the battleground Syrian town of Kobane early today, a monitoring group said. The attack came after the IS militants overran Kurdish headquarters in the border town on Friday..

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UN envoy calls on Turkey to prevent massacre in Kobani Suruc: Militants captured the headquarters of Kurdish fighters defending the battleground Syrian town of Kobani on Friday as a UN envoy warned of a looming “massacre” by Daesh. Outgunned Kurdish militia were struggling to prevent the militants closing off the last escape route for the thousands of civilians still in or near the town, prompting an appeal for urgent military assistance. US-led warplanes have intensified air strikes against Daesh fighters who have been attacking Kobani for three weeks but the Pentagon has warned that, without a force on the ground...

It should come as no surprise that Turkey so far refuses to put boots on the ground to fight the ISIS takeover of Kobane, a beseiged Kurdish town across Turkey's border with Syria. While there is much to criticize about our erstwhile NATO ally's government, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has clearly made a calculation that he can't trust the United States -- or more accurately, that he can't trust this administration. And why should he? The level of confusion, incompetence and lack of will President Obama has demonstrated in dealing with the multiple crises that face us in the Middle...

Barack Obama’s strategy to have regional allies provide ground forces to fight ISIS has not gotten off to a good start. Despite having ISIS almost at its gates — literally — Turkey refused to put ground troops in Syria to fight the terrorist army. The Foreign Minister also rejected Obama’s strategy of air strikes alone, saying that ISIS could not be defeated that way: Turkey’s foreign minister insisted Thursday that it is not “realistic” for the world to expect it alone to launch a ground operation against ISIS, even as a monitoring group said the extremists had seized a...

(Reuters) - Islamic State fighters launched a renewed assault on the Syrian city of Kobani on Wednesday night, and at least 21 people were killed in riots in neighboring Turkey where Kurds rose up against the government for doing nothing to protect their kin. Heavily outgunned defenders said Islamic State militants had pushed into two districts of the mainly Kurdish border city late on Wednesday, despite U.S.-led air strikes that the Pentagon acknowledged would probably not be enough to safeguard the town. In Turkey, street battles raged between Kurdish protesters and police across the mainly Kurdish southeast, in Istanbul and...

ISTANBUL (AP) -- As U.S. generals and Secretary of State John Kerry warn that a strategic Syrian border town could fall to Islamic State militants, the Turkish military has deployed its tanks on its side of the frontier but only watched the slaughter. Turkey's inaction despite its supposed participation in a coalition forged to crush the extremist group is frustrating Washington and its NATO allies, and reviving a rebellion by Turkish Kurds. Amid fears the Kurdish town of Kobani could fall any day, U.S. and NATO officials are traveling to Turkey on Thursday to press negotiations for more robust Turkish...

A UN official warned of pending "humanitarian tragedies" and pleaded desperately with the world to intervene on behalf of Kurds trapped in a Syrian city near the Turkish border, as Islamic State fighters stood on the brink of taking it. Kurds from villages throughout northern Syria have fled to Kobani for a final stand as the terrorist group has marauded across huge swaths of land, leaving a trail of death and destruction. With the city under siege for three weeks, the black-clad fighters have begun to raise their flag over neighborhoods and UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura...

<p>The Islamic State group is about to capture the Syrian border town of Kobani, Turkey's president said Tuesday, as outgunned Kurdish forces struggled to repel the extremists with limited aid from U.S.-led coalition airstrikes.</p> <p>Turkish president says Syrian border town of Kobani will fall to jihadists, who have outgunned Kurdish forces with tanks, munitions stolen from Iraqi bases.</p>

Observing fighters for the Islamic State (Isis) march closer and closer toward the key Syrian town of Kobani over the past week has felt like watching a bitterly suspenseful action movie unfold. Unlike other central Syrian towns that have been pounded to the ground mostly out of sight, Kobani’s looming collapse sits in full view of anyone paying attention – journalists, refugees and Turkish military tanks planted over the border, just a couple of miles away. That very border, carelessly drawn a century ago, now determines life or death for the thousands of people on either side. Every day, Isis...

War On Terror: While hitting a truck here or a tank there, the administration blows another chance to shatter Islamic State forces in open country as they plant their black flags on NATO's doorstep in the Kurdish city of Kobani. One of the benefits of being a superpower is that you have super power. But power is effective only if you use it, something President Obama is loathe to do. We have commented before on the administration's video-game air campaign against ISIS, designed to score points with the electorate even as ISIS relentlessly advances. CNN reports that over the weekend...

ISIS not backing down.The good news is that we and our allies are not backing down to ISIS concerning the fate of the Syrian border town Kobani. Reuters reports that air strikes are at least momentarily pushing ISIS back. It's the first sign of hope for 180,000 Kurds forced to flee across the border into Turkey by the ISIS incursion: U.S.-led air strikes on Wednesday pushed Islamic State fighters back to the edges of the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani, which they had appeared set to seize after a three-week assault, Kurdish officials in the town said.The town has become...

@Hevallo ‏@Hevallo 4m4 minutes ago #ISIS POLICE IN ANKARA! Ankara police showing the Islamic sign while attacking Kurds protesting attacks on #Kobane

The reason for the anger: Syrian Kurdish fighters are battling to prevent Islamic State militants from overrunning Kobani, a mostly Kurdish city in north Syria a couple of miles south of the Turkish border. Kurds have blamed the Turkish government for not doing enough to help the Kurds of Kobani.

While Turkish troops watched the fighting in Kobani through a chicken-wire fence, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that the town was about to fall and Kurdish fighters warned of an impending blood bath if they were not reinforced — fears the United States shares. But Mr. Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey would not get more deeply involved in the conflict with the Islamic State unless the United States agreed to give greater support to rebels trying to unseat the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad.