Newly-elected Turkish Pres. Recep Tayyip Erdogan had, by October 7,2014, carefully re-started Turkey's war inside Syria, to remove the Government of Pres. Bashar al-Assad, and had begun to draw the "old alliance" of the US Obama White House, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia back into the Syrian war. Pres. Erdogan's actions, however, included a refusal to support embattled Syrian Kurds, particularly in the town of Kobani, close to the Turkish border. Kurds from Kobani had long been associated with the activities of the PKK (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan: Kurdish Workers' Party), which had conducted guerilla warfare against the Turkish state until Turkey's formal ceasefire with the PKK in 2013. The destruction of Kobani by the Islamic Caliphate, while a Turkish armored brigade watched from across the border, was seen as payback against the PKK. But it has also triggered Kurdish disillusionment with Ankara.
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