Fertile Crescent

US warplanes renewed air strikes against Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) jihadists near the Syrian town of Kobane, as Iraqi peshmerga soldiers prepared to reinforce their fellow Kurds in the border area, the US military said on Oct. 29.

A Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) source has denied a report that the Kurdish Peshmerga forces would start heading for Kobane on Oct 26 The General Secretary of the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs of the autonomous Kurdish Regional  Government (KRG) in northern Iraq has denied a report that the Kurdish Peshmerga forces would start their passage to Kobane on Oct 26.

“We are ready for normalization with Israel,” said a top official in Ankara who I met this week. My question was this: Is Turkey considering normalizing its relations with Israel and Egypt, which are the only countries offering stability in the region other than Iran?

The battle for the Syrian town of Kobane will turn into a war of attrition unless Kurds defending it from an the onslaught of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants get arms that can repel tanks and armoured vehicles, a Syrian Kurdish leader told a pan-Arab newspaper.

The Turkish president says the PYD agreed to the passage of 1,300 FSA fighters to the border town of Kobane, while the leader of the Syrian Kurdish group stresses that talks are continuing and no agreement has been reached yet The Democratic Union Party (PYD), the main Kurdish group fighting in Syria against jihadists, has agreed to the passage of 1,300 Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters to the S

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is earning about $1 million a day from black market oil sales, the United States has said, vowing to impose harsh sanctions on the purchasers of the oil, “including middlemen from Turkey.”

Israel deployed police in force in Jerusalem Oct. 24  for weekly Muslim prayers and restricted access to a flashpoint mosque, after a deadly attack by a Palestinian sent tensions soaring.
      

A bid by Islamic State fighters to seize the flashpoint Syrian border town of Kobane has stalled, American officials said, with the help of air strikes reported to have killed over 500 jihadists.

Energy Minister Taner Yıldız has defended the controversial razing of an olive grove for the construction of a coal plant in the mining town of Soma, arguing that “100-200 trees shouldn’t stop Turkey’s development.”

Again we see that Ankara is bedeviled by events just across its border, which it can’t control or prevent because of the futile way the government is trying to impose its conflicting agenda on developments that have their own dynamics.