Islamic State, Turkey and Syria’s Kurds
Murky relations
Sep 22nd 2014, 18:44 by S.B. and A.Z. | CAIRO AND ERBIL
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AS JIHADISTS calling themselves the "Islamic State" (IS) have swept across Iraq and Syria, they have come up against one unusually tough opponent. Syria's ethnic Kurds have stubbornly clung onto three separate enclaves along Syria's border with Turkey and even pushed back into lands captured by IS. Since September 18th IS has turned the tables, concentrating its forces for an all-out offensive to take the central enclave around the Syrian Kurdish-majority town of Ain al-Arab, known as Kobane in Kurdish, on the border with Turkey. IS sees the territory as strategic because it lies close to the edges of its "caliphate" and to a supply route used by foreign fighters joining the group. IS has grabbed scores of villages, pushing more than 100,000 Kurdish refugees into Turkey.
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