The siege of Kobane (Kobani) enters day #29 tomorrow. The Kurdish men, women and entire families continue to hold about two-thirds of the city.
Day #28 saw six suicide car bombs from ISIS aimed at Kobane leadership positions inside the city. Meanwhile in Turkey President Erdogan still refuses to assist the sieged city and will not permit Kurdish citizens from Turkey to cross the border to join their brothers and sisters in arms.

To the contrary today saw Erdogan actually begin to bomb the Kurds inside Turkey in clear violation of a 2 year ceasefire. Erdogan is doing just about everything he can to speed up the collapse of Kobane in Northern Syria. The longer Kobane holds out, the more politically dangerous the elements within Turkey become to the centralized power of Sunni Erdogan.
Simultaneously, pressure, or more aptly put, “optics” and “political pressure” are creating a disconcerting place for President Obama. At his core Sunni Obama wants desperately to support his ideological brother, Erdogan. However, the longer the Kurds in Kobane are able to hold on, the more pressure mounts upon Obama as more people begin to ask the question ‘why is he not helping them’?

So far the administration has been able to benefit from a wilfully blind media that has lost the capacity to ask the hard questions. Questions like: ‘it makes no sense to watch 10,000 Kobane Kurds die/lose – only to execute a strategy to replace them with 5,000 more by next April’.

Here’s the Associated Press Perspective – WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama and military chiefs from more than 20 nations gathered Tuesday in a show of strength against Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria. But the alliance faced a fresh test as Turkey launched airstrikes against Kurdish rebels inside its borders, defying pleas from the U.S. to instead focus on the IS.
The attacks marked Turkey’s first major airstrikes against Kurdish rebels on its own soil since peace talks began two years ago, and occurred amid heightened concern over Islamic State advances on the Syrian town of Kobani. Kurds in Turkey accuse the government there of standing idly by while Syrian Kurds are being killed in the besieged border town.
The U.S. has been pressing Turkey to take a more active role in the campaign to destroy the Islamic State group. Officials from Ankara were participating in Tuesday’s meeting at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, where U.S. officials said the coalition countries were to discuss their strategy.
Obama was expected to speak to reporters there after an afternoon session.
Earlier Tuesday, the U.S.-led coalition launched 21 airstrikes in and around Kobani. One of the strikes targeted the Tel Shair hill that overlooks parts of the city, according to Idriss Nassan, deputy head of Kobani’s foreign relations committee.
Nassan said Kurdish fighters later captured the hill and brought down the black flag of the Islamic State group. The extremist group still controls more than a third of the predominantly Kurdish town.
While the White House has tried to point out progress in the campaign against the militants, the government is also preparing the American public for a military effort that could extend well beyond Obama’s presidency. Officials acknowledged Tuesday that the airstrikes in Kobani may not be enough to prevent a militant takeover, given the lack of an effective fighting force on the ground.
“We certainly do not want the town to fall,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “At the same time, our capacity to prevent that town from falling is limited by the fact that air strikes can only do so much.”
Syrian Kurds have been begging the international community for heavy weapons to help bolster their defense of Kobani. They’ve also called for Turkey to open the border to allow members of the Kurdish militia in northwestern Syria – known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG – to travel through Turkish territory to reinforce the city.
So far, both requests have gone unfulfilled. (read more)