LIVE BLOG: The Middle East as it happens

Turkey's PM struck back at accusations that his government is more interested in toppling Syrian president Bashir al-Asad than defeating Islamic State militants massing on its border.

"Turkey is against ISIS just the same way that it is against Assad," Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara.

"Assad and ISIS are both responsible for all these events and tragedies."

A tweet by Turkey's minister of culture:

Kurdish protesters have gathered in many European cities to demand more help for besieged Kurdish forces struggling to hold off an Islamic State advance on the Syrian town of Kobani.

Syrian Kurdish demonstrators in London closed off Westminster Bridge for the second time on Thursday.

Photograph by @Hevallo

Turkey is pushing for a buffer zone along its frontier with Syria as part of ongoing negotiations with the US over how best to confront the Islamic State.

According to a New York Times report, the buffer would act as a no-fly zone and a safe haven to absorb some of the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees fleeing into Turkey.

Turkey is trying to allay US fears that the zone could end up becoming a de facto state along the border for Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Asad.

Yet the prospect of a buffer zone is proving deeply divisive in Washington, as it would go far beyond President Obama’s original mission of taking on the Islamic State and would lead to a direct confrontation with the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.

While Turkey has largely described the plan in humanitarian terms — to protect refugees and also Turkey’s border — the argument made privately is that a buffer zone would quickly evolve into a place where moderate rebels would be trained to fight Mr. Assad’s government; in other words, a fledgling rebel state.

The US has been piling the pressure on Turkey to do more in the fight against the Islamic State.

A Guardian editorial today argues Turkey has legitimate cause for concern over taking miitary action against IS:

A mistrustful Turkey is thus in no hurry now to let the US push it into sending ground forces into Syria, even in a limited one-off operation to do with Kobani, without assurances on overall objectives and especially as no clear international mandate is available at the UN. Turkish restraint also arises from its own difficult internal political and ethnic balance. Helping the Kobani Kurds could empower pro-PKK factions at a moment when Ankara is negotiating a delicate peace agreement with that movement in Turkey itself. But not helping the Kobani Kurds may fuel more Kurdish unrest inside Turkey. It is a catch-22 situation which Mr Erdoğan has not resolved.

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Yemen has released footage of a suicide bomber blowing himself up at a rally in the capital yesterday.

The bomb struck as supporters of the Houthi rebel group arrived at a protest in a busy central square. 47 people were killed including five children.

The clip, captured on security cameras outside a bank, shows a line of protesters patting people down as they enter Tahrir square, seconds later a huge blast rips through the crowd, sending people and debris flying across the street.

The attack occurred just hours after a showdown between Yemen’s president Hadi and the Houthis after the rebel group rejected the appointment of a new Prime Minister, forcing Hadi to rescind the post.

Government officials and analysts believe the attack was the work of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

In September AQAP declared war on the Houthis, whose manifesto includes revival of the Zaydi form of Shia Islam almost unique to the north of Yemen.

The armed wing of Palestinian group Hamas has launched a recruitment drive to boost its numbers.

“We are opening the door to Gaza’s youth; those who want to join us know how to find us,” a masked spokesperson for the Ezzedin al-Qassam Brigades told a festival organised by Hamas in Gaza City’s Shujaya district organised on Thursday.

The festival was organised to celebrate the group’s steadfastness in the fact of Israel’s bloody 51-day assault on Gaza, which saw more than 2,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and over 70 Israelis, mostly soldiers, killed.

“Qassam’s men and arsenal…are ready for any contingency,” the spokesperson said.

The announcement came one month after the group said it had begun training a "popular army" to defend the strip from future Israeli attacks, reportedly enlisting thousands of young men in the Gaza Strip.

A brigades source told Anadolu Agency earlier that enlisted men would initially be trained in the use of light arms before moving on to more advanced weaponry.

Flyers have been hung on the walls of local mosques, calling on young men to join the "popular army" in preparation for any possible conflict with Israel.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed Thursday that the peace process with Kurdish rebels would not be derailed by "sabotage", after at least 23 people were killed in protests over the government's policy on Islamic State (IS) militants.

Protesters in several cities in the southeast of the country with large Kurdish populations clashed overnight Wednesday to Thursday for the third night running with police, in the worst outbreak of such violence in years. 

The latest death came in the southeastern province of Mardin when one protester was killed and half a dozen wounded in clashes with police Thursday.

The violence has sparked fears that the standoff over Kobane could endanger talks between the government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting an insurgency for self-rule in southeast Turkey.

Erdogan blamed the unrest on the "dark forces" seeking to sabotage the delicate peace process to end 30 years of violence that has claimed at least 40,000 lives.  

"It's very obvious that this game is aimed at sabotaging the peaceful environment in the east and southeast as well as the peace process and our brotherhood," Erdogan said in his first comments on the unrest.

AFP

At least 20 soldiers were killed and 15 injured in Yemen on Thursday when a suicide car bomber attacked a security outpost in a south-east province.

The attack took place at Mukalla in Hadarmout province just hours after a bomb hit the capital Sana’a killing nearly 70 people.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack in Mukalla, although the province is a stronghold for al-Qaeda militants who have waged a campaign of violence against government targets.

Video footage of the attack’s aftermath was broadcast on local television.

Turkish police on Thursday used water cannon and tear gas against protesters at two universities in the capital Ankara, reports Today’s Zaman.

A demonstration against the Islamic State (IS) group’s attack on Kobane was held at the Middle East Technical University, where protesters wanted to march to the Ankara office of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Police stopped protesters leaving the campus by using water cannon and tear gas.

Students then protested at Ankara University against the IS attacks and the police response to the demonstrations at the Middle East Technical University.

Police again used water cannon and tear gas to disperse the second protest.

Christopher Davidson of Durham University and author of After the Sheikhs: the Coming Collapse of the Gulf Monarchies has written an analysis discussing the “broader implications” of the attack on Kobane.

“The UN has scrambled, as best as it can, to retrogressively fit the Iraq bombing campaigns into its narrative, and it will have to do the same with the Syrian airstrikes. But by the time the ‘boots on the ground’ arrive in Syria (probably not before Kobane falls, but maybe on some subsequent date)—which may not be Western or NATO boots, but those of Arab regional NATO client states—we will have read another compelling chapter in the story of the UN’s decline,” Davidson wrote on the Hurst Publishers website.

A priest and 20 other Christians kidnapped by Al-Qaeda-linked rebels in Syria this week were released Thursday, the Franciscan order said.

"Father Hanna Jallouf has been released this morning... He is under house arrest at the convent of Qunyeh," the order said, without providing further details.

A Franciscan spokeswoman later confirmed to AFP that the other captives were also released.

Rebels linked to Al-Nusra Front -- Al-Qaeda's Syria branch -- abducted Jallouf and the others Sunday in the northwestern village of Qunyeh, near the Turkish border, the order said.

A local activist said Al-Nusra had been trying to take over some of the Franciscan properties in Qunyeh, prompting Jallouf to complain to an Islamic religious court last week. 

The Franciscans, a Roman Catholic religious order that has operated in the country for more than eight centuries, have 19 people working there. They have been working in Qunyeh for 125 years, the activist said.

Still missing in Syria are two senior Aleppo clerics --Archbishop Gregorius Yohanna Ibrahim of the Syriac Orthodox Church and Bishop Boulos Yazigi of the Greek Orthodox Church, kidnapped in April 2013, and Italian Jesuit Father Paolo Dall’Oglio, taken by rebels three months later.

AFP

A group of Syrian rebels have posted videos to YouTube that they say show a secret Russian-Syrian intelligence collection base.

Opposition fighters said the base has been used by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces to spy on the communications of rebel groups – as well as potentially the Israelis.

The Daily Beast reported Free Syrian Army officials, US officials and independent experts as saying if the information is verified then it would reveal a “level of Russian involvement in the Syrian civil war that was not previously known.”

“The videos and accompanying photos show insignias representing a branch of Syrian intelligence and the Russian Osnaz GRU radio electronic intelligence agency. The FSA found photos and lists of senior Russian intelligence and military officials who visited the facility, pictures of Russian personnel running the base, and maps showing the location of Israeli military units,” the Daily Beast reported.

Turkey will not make concessions on public order, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Thursday.

"Public order will be established either way; everyone will respect public order and public peace," Davutoglu said.

Some pro-Kurdish groups have started protests in various eastern regions against the Turkish government’s strategy over Kobane. Demonstrators have accused Ankara of not doing enough to protect the Kurdish population in that area.

Davutoglu stressed that Turkey was founded on the basis that the protection of the law for all citizens and the state is not based on any ethnic or sectarian discrimination.

"From now on, our behaviour will be strict on those who disrupt public order or peace and those who act illegally," Davutoglu said.

The Turkish PM called for peace between all Turkish citizens and said: "We will not let vandalism damage the solution process.”

Turkey has launched what is domestically known as the ‘solution process’ to end a decades-old conflict between the state and the outlawed Kurdish separatist PKK movement.

"I hope that we all embrace the solution process and it will continue in an atmosphere of brotherhood and peace," Davutoglu said.

Amnesty International has called for the Turkish government to halt “spiralling violence”, after 19 people were killed and scores injured in protests by Kurds at Ankara’s stance on the advance of Islamic State (IS) in Kobane.

“It is essential that the Turkish authorities act now to calm tensions with firm but rights-respecting policing and a commitment to investigate promptly the up to 19 deaths and scores of injuries of protesters,” said Andrew Gardner, Amnesty International’s researcher on Turkey.

“Any use of force by the security forces must be strictly in line with international human rights standards, in particular the principles of necessity and proportionality.”