ANKARA, October 9 (RIA Novosti) – Mass riots in Turkey are unrelated to the events in the Syrian town of Kobani, which is besieged by the Islamic State (IS) militants, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in a statement Thursday.
"The biggest source of our grief is associated with the victims of violence in many Turkish cities... Still, the violence that we see has no relation to the events in this town," Erdogan stressed in the statement posted on the official presidential website.
The organizers of these riots intend to destabilize the situation in Turkey and undermine the process of peaceful settlement of the Kurdish issue, Erdogan said.
The Turkish president called on political parties, public organizations and family members of the protesters to share prudence and caution. Erdogan stressed that the authorities would not allow any threats to the stability, security and inter-ethnic unity of the country.
Since Monday, Turkey has been facing mass protests of the Kurdish population perturbed by Erdogan's non-interference policy in the developments in Kobani. Some 22 demonstrators were killed, about 200 taken to the hospitals.
IS militants and Kurdish forces have been clashing over the Syrian town of Kobani, on the Turkish border, for three weeks. The Turkish military has reportedly deployed more troops and armored vehicles at the border. Ankara, though, has so far been reluctant to intervene, despite the parliament's authorization to use military force against the jihadists.
The IS Sunni extremist group has seized large parts of Iraq and Syria and proclaimed an Islamic caliphate on the areas it controls. Its rapid advance in northern Iraq triggered a response from Washington, which launched airstrikes against the insurgents fighting on the Iraqi soil in August. The military action was subsequently extended to Syria with an international coalition set up to defeat the extremists.
