KARACA, Turkey // ISIL fighters edged towards a strategic town on northern Syria's border with Turkey on Friday, battling Kurdish forces and sending at least two shells into Turkish territory, witnesses said.
ISIL launched an offensive to try to capture the border town of Kobani more than a week ago, besieging it from three sides. More than 160,000 Kurds have fled the town and surrounding villages over the past week, crossing into Turkey.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country has changed its stance on its involvement in the campaign against ISIL militants following the release of Turkish hostages held in Iraq.
"Now the position has changed. What follows will be much different," Mr Erdogan told reporters after flying back to Istanbul from a trip to the United States, heralding a more active Turkish role in the US-led fight against ISIL.
He said that "necessary steps" would be taken by parliament on October 2, without specifying the exact nature of these measures.
Turkey's prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Friday that the country was prepared to take any measure that ensures its own security in the fight against ISIL, keeping Ankara's options open amid growing pressure from its Western allies for concrete action.
Ankara has for months frustrated the West with its distinctly low-key role in the campaign against ISIL but there have been signs over the last days it is shifting its approach.
"If any military operation or a solution carries the perspective of bringing peace and stability to the region, we will support it," Mr Davutoglu said.
"We will take whatever measures our national security requires," he said.
ISIL appeared to have taken control of a hill from where fighters of the YPG, the main Kurdish armed group in northern Syria, had been attacking them in recent days, 10 kilometres west of Kobani.
Booms of artillery and bursts of machine-gun fire echoed across the border, and at least two shells hit a vineyard on the Turkish side. There were no immediate reports of casualties in Turkey and paramilitary police arrived to inspect the site.
"We're afraid. We're taking the car and leaving today," said vineyard owner Huseyin Turkmen, 60, as small arms fire rang out in the Syrian hills just to the south.
Kurdish forces said on Thursday they had pushed back the advance on Kobani, also known as Ayn Al Arab, by ISIL but appealed for US-led air strikes to target the insurgents' tanks and heavy armaments.
"The clashes are moving between east, west and south of Kobani ... The three sides are active," Idris Nassan, deputy foreign minister for the Kobani canton, said by phone from the centre of the town.
"They are trying hard to reach Kobani. There is resistance here by YPG, by Kobani and some volunteers from north Kurdistan — Turkish Kurds — who are coming to share in the efforts of Kobani. They have made a strong response," he said.
Kobani's strategic location has been blocking ISIL fighters from consolidating their gains in northern Syria. The group tried to take the town in July but was repulsed by local forces backed by Kurdish fighters from Turkey.
"If they did come inside Kobani, everyone here is armed, they are armed and resisting. Even me, I am the deputy foreign minister here in Kobani canton but I am an armed man too. I am ready to defend Kobani," Mr Nassan said.
"Every girl, every young man, every man who is able to fight, to carry a gun, they armed and they are ready to defend and fight."
Turkey has been slow to respond to calls for a coalition to fight ISIL in Syria, worried in part about links between Syrian Kurds and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a militant group which waged a three-decade campaign against the Turkish state for greater Kurdish rights.
The PKK has called on Turkey's Kurds to join the fight to defend Kobani and accused Ankara of supporting ISIL. Residents in the border area say hundreds of youths have done so, although Turkish security forces have been trying to keep them from crossing the frontier.
Turkey strongly denies it has given any form of support to the Islamist militants but Western countries say its open borders during Syria's three-year-old civil war allowed ISIL and other radical groups to grow in power.
The Turkish military has in the past fired back when shells from Syria's civil war strayed into Turkish territory, and the intensifying battle for Kobani is heightening pressure on Ankara to take a more robust stance against the insurgents.
* Reuters and Agence France-Presse
