PKK calls on Turkish Kurds to join Syria war as 130,000 refugees flee

Turkey’s Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) on Monday called on fellow Kurds to cross into Syria and combat Islamic State militants besieging a town near the border, the pro-Kurdish agency Firat reported.

“Young people from the North must go to Kobane and join the historic, honourable resistance," said a statement by the Group of Communities in Kurdistan (KCK), the PKK’s umbrella organisation.

The People's Protection Units (YPG), a PKK wing, has been fighting against Islamic State and other militant groups for the past three years. Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war it has been a bulwark against IS and other militant forces moving into the Kurdish-populated areas of Rovaja.

"Kobane is also the symbol of the Rojava Revolution, and in reality it is a part of North Kurdistan,” the statement added.

The statement comes as 1300,000 Syrian Kurds crossed the border into Turkey over the past few days, fleeing an advance by IS who seized dozens of villages near a strategic border town, the Turkish government said on Monday.

According to the pro-PKK Hawarnews, the IS attacks have triggered a mass exodus of thousands, including Kurds, Arabs and otfher minorities, toward the Turkish border in the last few days. It said a dozen Kobane villages had been deserted.

The UN body on Saturday said that as many as hundreds of thousands of refugees might flee the fighting and the agency was preparing for worse to come.

Until now, Kobane, the third largest Kurdish population centre in Syria, had been relatively safe and had taken in 200,000 people displaced from elsewhere in Syria.

However, the YPG - Syrian Kurdish forces - reported three heavy rockets fired into Kobane in a singel round of fighting, causing many locals to panic, said Kurdish Rudaw news agency on Friday.

"Join the YPG and become a well trained soldier,” Murat Karayilan, a senior PKK leader, was quoted as saying. He called on Turkey’s young Kurds to “join their brethren in Rojava,” the pro-PKK Firatnews reported.

Karayılan warned of a humanitarian disaster and the threat of massacre by the IS, comparing what could happen in Kobane to the IS assault on Shingal in Iraqi Kurdistan, where hundreds of Yezidi men were murdered and countless women were taken as war prize by IS.

"Action must be taken immediately to prevent such a disaster. Everyone must do what they can," he declared.

Karayilan condemned Turkish silence over events in Rojava, accusing Ankara of tacit support of the. 

The Syrian Turkish government has reportedly closed several crossings on the Syrian-Turkish borders following the mass movement of Kurdish refugees into Turkey, said BBC Arabic.