After weeks of prodding by the US and Europeans, Turkey is finally getting off of the fence and helping Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga fighters to join the defense of Kobani, the Kurdish city in northern Syria that is under siege by Islamic State (IS) radicals.

It’s a change in policy for Ankara, which has refused to allow Kurdish fighters on the Turkish side of the border to cross south into Syria and get into the fight.  Turkey barely recognizes Kurds inside its own borders as having their own identity.  Turkey has fought a 30-year war with Kurds seeking their own state, at a cost of 40,000 lives over the years.  But a different group with which Turkey has cultivated ties governs the Iraqi Kurds.

With the influx of battle seasoned Peshmerga forces, there is a sense that the tide is turning in Kobani.  The Americans have run days of air strikes against Islamic State and degraded IS’s forces.  Hundreds of IS fighters are believed to have been killed. 

Inside Kobani, conditions are rough.  Only a dozen or so doctors and nurses are attending to the Kurdish wounded anywhere they can – apartments and homes are makeshift clinics.  The main hospital was destroyed by an IS rocket attack more than a week ago.