Operation Featherweight: Month 3, Week 3, Day 3.

It now turns out that Turkey has not given permission for 200 Kurdish Peshmerga fighter to take their heavy weapons to relieve Kobane/Ayn al-Arab via Turkey. Yesterday the Iraqi Kurdish government gave them permission to travel to Syria and by all accounts they are already packed and ready to go. All they are waiting for now is permission from the Turkish government which has simply acknowledged that it has received a request for permission.

Meanwhile the battle for the strategically important city that sits just 1km (0.6miles) from Syria's northern border with Turkey has begun to turn against the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) who are defending it. Since sustaining heavy losses and being pushed to the outskirts of the city last weekend the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) have been steadily reinforcing their positions around Kobane in preparation for a fresh assault on the city. That assault was launched overnight and succeeded in ISIL re-capturing Tall Shair hill. This of course is the tactically important hill which controls the roughly 4km (2.5 mile) area of open ground in which the YPG can receive fresh supplies via air-drops. Fortunately though it appears that ISIL have not been able to advance down Tall Shair into the area between the hill and the city. As I write reports are beginning to emerge that a YPG counter-attack has again forced ISIL from the hill.

Despite this fresh offensive and an increase in the build up of ISIL forces around Kobane the US-led coalition has actually been reducing the number of air-strikes it has been carrying out. On Tuesday (21/10/14) they carried out just 4 air-strikes against ISIL buildings, fighting positions and ground units. On Wednesday (22/10/14) they carried out 6 strikes against ISIL vehicles, fighting positions and a logistics centre. Today they've carried out only 4 air-strikes against vehicles, fighting positions and a command and control centre. This are quite clearly not being sufficient to prevent an ISIL advance. They may be just enough though if Turkey were to allow those 200 Peshmerga and their heavy weapons to enter Kobane.

As well as their fresh attempt to seize Kobane it also appears that ISIL have been continuing their efforts to eradicate Iraq's Yazidis around Mount Sinjar. On Tuesday ISIL's advance was stopped at the village of Sharfadin. However since then Peshmerga fighters have been unable to push back ISIL meaning that they are again trapped at the foot of the mountain and in danger of being pushed back up Mount Sinjar as they were back in August when the coalition operation began. In their efforts to resist ISIL at Sharfadin the Peshmerga are receiving absolutely no support for the coalition either in the form of air-drops of supplies or air-strikes against ISIL positions. This is particularly frustrating because there are 44 strike aircraft belonging to non-US members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) that could quite quickly force ISIL back from the foot of Mount Sinjar while the US concentrates of Kobane. Unfortunately US President Barack Obama is denying those 44 aircraft permission to join in with the fight.

While I'm here I should also point out that I seem to have come to the attention of a Turkish nationalist on Twitter which is proving rather tiresome. After all there is nothing like a dozen Tweets inside a minute to let you know that you are dealing with a calm and rational thinker. Basically this person's position is that all Kurds are terrorists citing the 2012 Gaziantep bombing and the 2008 bombing in Istanbul’s Güngören district as examples. These two examples stand out from bombings carried out by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) because they targeted civilians rather then military targets do give me an opportunity to bring up Turkey's rather murky internal politics.

When modern Turkey was formed by Mustafa Ataturk following the fall of the Ottoman Empire (the last Islamic Caliphate) in 1920 its Constitution gave the military a very strong role as the defenders of the secular nation against politicians trying to pursue a religious agenda. As a result there have been four military coups in Turkey and there has long been talk of a mysterious "Ergenekon" group made up of members of the Turkish Establishment who monitor the actions of the government and will act to overthrow it if Turkey's secular values are threatened.

If the Ergenekon group did exist then they would represent a very serious threat to current Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who has not only attempted to change Turkey's constitution but also seems to have a clear Islamist agenda. For example he not only made it legal for women to wear the Muslim headscarf he also actively encourages it. Erdogan must have been very worried about Ergenekon because in 2007 he began a formal investigation into them which resulted in the conviction of 200+ people by 2013. In 2012 300+ people were jailed in the "Sledgehammer" plot for plotting to remove Erdogan just after he came to power in 2003. The Güngören bombing happened just after the Ergenekon investigation was opened and the Gaziantep bombing happened just before the trials were due to come to a close. As a result they both seem to have been the work of the Turkish deep state in order to use the threat of 'Kurdish Terrorism' to remind people how important the work of the deep state is and possibly trigger another coup to remove Erdogan. Alternatively the bombings could have been carried out by Erdogan supporters to turn the public against the deep state.

In 2009 Erdogan began a peace process with the Kurds in order to secure the votes needed to change the constitution - including to allow him to increase to powers of the President's office that he now holds. However he now seems keen to play the Kurdish terrorism card to secure the support of the Turkish nationalists. After all his support for a virulently Islamist group such as ISIL certainly violates Turkey's secular constitution.

(Originally Posted) 18:00 on 23/10/14 (UK date).