Turkey's President said on Friday (October 10) the country will not bow to street protesters demanding the government do more to protect Kurds.
Intense fighting raged in the Syrian Kurdish border town of Kobani, where a three-week-old assault by Islamic State fighters has infuriated many of neighboring Turkey's 15 million Kurds.
The violence unfolding in Kobani has unleashed the worst street violence in years in Turkey, where Kurds have risen up since Tuesday (October 7) against President Tayyip Erdogan's government, which they accuse of allowing their kin to be slaughtered.
At least 31 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.
The Kurdish uprising in Turkey provoked a furious response on Friday from the Turkish government, which accuses Kurdish political leaders of using the situation in Kobani to destroy public order in Turkey and wreck its own delicate peace process.
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.
"How can we approve a Syrian regime that killed about 250,000 people? If neighboring countries who have a Muslim population still support the Assad regime and profit from it, they cannot explain this. Those who still talk about providing financial aid and weaponry to the Assad regime cannot account for their actions," Erdogan told a rally in the Black Sea province of Trabzon.
Erdogan wants a no-fly zone to prevent Assad's planes from flying over the area near its border and a protected buffer zone there for refugees.
"Turkey is not a country which would determine its domestic and foreign policy based on the violent acts of terrorists and drifters. Both those dummies, and the leaders who hold their strings in hand, should be aware that Turkey is not a country to be intimidated by street protests and change direction," he said.
Turkish Kurds fought a decades-long insurgency in which 40,000 people were killed. A truce last year has been one of the main achievements of Erdogan's decade in power, but Abdullah Ocalan, jailed co-founder of the Kurdish militant PKK, has said the peace process is doomed if Turkey permits Kobani to fall.
Many of Turkey's Kurds say the refusal to defend Kobani is proof the government sees them as a bigger enemy than Islamic State.
REUTERS