Syria

Syrian rebels led by Al-Qaeda loyalists launched a major assault on the government-held city of Idlib on Oct. 27 in a bid to consolidate their control over the northwest, a monitoring group said.
     
Rebels seized control of most of Idlib province early in the three and a half year old civil war but troops have held out in the provincial capital, resupplied by air.

Some 73 illegal immigrants have been captured off of Turkey’s western coast during operations conducted by the Coast Guard to halt human trafficking in the Aegean Sea.

Washington called Oct. 27 for the battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to be extended to the Internet, as coalition partners met for talks on how to stop the jihadists' online propaganda.
      

The US economic interest in Turkey remains strong despite political strains, says Turkish American Chamber of Commerce head Beşir Kemal Ustaoğlu.

The leftists’ traditional opposition to Western powers has always been as a matter of principle in the name of “anti-imperialism”; now the neo-Islamists express opposition whenever the Western powers fail or refuse to support and help them when necessary.

A Turkish village guard who disappeared last month was killed by separatists who shot him against a post in an execution-style killing, the army said Oct. 27.

The corpse of the man, who the army said was abducted on Sept. 12, was found Oct. 26 tied with electrical wire to a telegraph post in the district of Tatvan of Bitlis province in southeastern Turkey.

Kurdish forces thwarted a new attempt Oct. 26 by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters to cut off the Syrian town of Kobane from the border with Turkey before Iraqi Kurdish reinforcements can deploy.

Turkey disagrees with the United States, Russia and Iran separately over their stances on Syria, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told media representatives onboard his presidential jet returning to Turkey from Estonia on Oct. 25.

A Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) source has denied a report that the Kurdish Peshmerga forces would start heading for Kobane on Oct 26 The General Secretary of the Ministry of Peshmerga Affairs of the autonomous Kurdish Regional  Government (KRG) in northern Iraq has denied a report that the Kurdish Peshmerga forces would start their passage to Kobane on Oct 26.

The government’s new amendment on the structure of the gendarmerie “in principle, could be a positive step” with regard to visa liberalization, the outgoing head of the European Union Delegation to Turkey EU Ambassador Stefano Manservisi has said.

Turkey and the EU should together assess how much of a step forward this marks for a better integrated border management, he added.