The-american-interest.com | Henri J. Barkey

Whether Kobani falls or stands, it has become a defining moment of nationhood and identity for Syrian and Turkish Kurds.

Rudaw.net

BAGHDAD – The Iraqi Parliament voted to approve key nominations to the new government of of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, with veteran former foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari confirmed as finance minister.

Al-monitor.com

Turkey failed on Oct. 16 to win the coveted nonpermanent seat at the UN Security Council that it hoped would reinforce its influence in regional affairs, which has seriously dwindled in recent years. The result is a disappointment for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who hoped for a victory at the United Nations to counter claims that their policies have left Turkey isolated internationally.

Newsweek.com | By Heysam Mislim

I chose to stay to report about the reality on the ground and tell millions of Kurds what is really happening in Kobane, as opposed to the propaganda and lies spread by Islamic State media and several other media outlets.

Washingtonpost.com | By Editorial Board

THE OBAMA administration seems to have settled on a blame-Turkey defense for a possible humanitarian catastrophe in the Syrian city of Kobane. It’s convenient and not entirely wrong. But it leaves out a big chunk of the story.

ISTANBUL — My generation of Turks grew up hating Kurdish separatists. Instead of questioning why Kurds weren’t allowed to speak their own language, live in their own villages or sing their own songs, we blamed the Kurdistan Workers Party, or P.K.K., which had been waging a guerrilla war against Turkey since 1984, for all of Turkey’s woes.

Marieclaire.com | By Elizabeth Griffin

There's a group of 7,500 soldiers who have been fighting an incalculably dangerous war for two years. They fight despite daily threats of injury and death. They fight with weapons that are bigger and heavier than they are against a relentless enemy. And yet they continue to fight.

Theguardian.com

Kurds near Downing Street demand heavy weapons and antitank missiles from the UK government for fight against Isis

Theguardian.com | Reuters in Beirut

Isis’s latest attempt to take predominantly Kurdish town close to Turkey repelled with aid of Kurds crossing the borde.

Since June, Iraqi Kurdistan has been receiving hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced people fleeing the massacres committed by the jihadists of the Islamic State. Among them are tens of thousands of Christians, Yezidis, Shabaks and members of other religious minorities who have been living in these lands of the Upper Mesopotamia for centuries and who, after having survived the massacres of the Ottoman Empire and Saddam Hussein’s bloody dictatorship, today find their very existence threatened.