Kobanî

In an article for CNN.com, the founder of US-based Chobani Greek Yogurt Hamdi Ulukaya urges the world to ‘step up’ on the Syria refugee crisis and create new initiatives for aid Turkish-born Hamdi Ulukaya, the founder of the U.S.-based Chobani Greek Yogurt, has called on the world to “step up on the Syria refugee crisis” in an article for CNN.com.

The fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is unifying not only Baghdad and Arbil, but also the Kurds in Iraq and Syria, thereby creating a completely new Kurdish reality in the region.

Three decades of Kurdish insurgency has cost the lives of 40,000 people, as well as some $400 million, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s senior aide and former minister Binali Yıldırım has said.

The U.S. State Department has denied supplying U.S. arms to Kurdish forces defending the besieged town of Kobane, insisting that any supplies are from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq.
      
"The United States is not providing U.S. arms to the PYD [the Democratic Union Party]," a department official told the Anadolu Agency on Dec. 9.
      

A human rights watchdog urged Turkey on Dec. 3 to remove from its border with Syria landmines which have killed three people and wounded nine among more than 2,000 Syrian refugees camped in a minefield.

Many media outlets claimed that ISIL launched its first attack from Turkey on Nov. 29. Did it really? Two fresh statements seem to draw a new picture "ISIS launches attack on Kobani from inside Turkey for first time," claimed a headline in The Guardian on Nov. 29.

A second contingent of Kurdish Peshmerga fighters streamed across the Syrian border from Turkey late Dec. 2 to join the fight against jihadists for the strategic Syrian town of Kobane.

The Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) has confirmed that 150 Kurdish Iraqi fighters combatting Islamist jihadists in Kobane will be replaced with a new group that will also use Turkish soil to travel to the northern Syrian town.

Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has announced that it will soon send replacements for its 150 Peshmerga fighters who were recently sent to the Syrian town of Kobane through Turkey.

Militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) battling for the capture of the Syrian town of Kobane suffered some of their heaviest losses yet in 24 hours of clashes and U.S.-led air strikes, monitors said Nov. 30.