At least 29 people have been killed and dozens wounded in nationwide protests against Turkey’s refusal to assist Kurdish forces against the Islamic State in Kobane. Turkish authorities have detained 16 Kurdish PYD fighters seeking to flee across the Syrian border into Turkey; two of them were unarmed females. Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has warned that a massacre of Kurds in Kobane will doom peace talks with the PKK. Three policemen were gunned down in Bingöl. The US is asking Turkey to take a larger role in the coalition against the Islamic State. A lawyers’ group accused the Erdogan government of “instigating the [Islamic State] to kill.”
