Hundreds of Kurds took to the streets of Beirut Sunday in a large show of support to fighters staving off a relentless bid by jihadists to take over the northern Syrian-Kurdish town of Kobani.
Protesters accused the Turkish government and its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of supporting ISIS and suppressing Kurds.
“Everything that is currently happening in Kobani is because of Turkey,” one of the protesters told TV stations covering the protest. “Erdogan is supporting ISIS and is happy to see Kurds dying.”
Ignoring calls for intervention to prevent ISIS from committing a bloody massacre against the town’s Kurds, Turkey, which borders Syria, has ordered the Army to shut the frontier near Kobani and prevent Kurdish fighters from crossing into Kobani to join the fight.
Mostly Syrian-Kurds, the protesters waved the flag of the Kurdish Workers Party, and called for their armament in order to fight ISIS.
Some of the protesters said they wanted to join the battle, but were afraid of being scooped up by Syrian authorities for dodging military service.
“Over 1,000 of us are wanted for compulsory military service in Syria, so we cannot move to Syria or else the government will find us,” one of the protesters, who said he was originally from Kobani, told television station.
The protesters began their march from the Cola roundabout and headed towards downtown Beirut.
The large size of the protest thre security forces off guard as they struggled to reroute traffic.
The main road connecting the two locations was completely shut, causing an unusually heavy traffic jam for a Sunday in Beirut.
