TURKEY CLOSES BORDER TO SYRIA - CAN'T COPE

MOST OF THE BORDER CROSSING FROM SYRIA TO TURKEY ARE NOW CLOSED AND GUARDED HEAVILY

Turkey has begun to close some of its border crossings with Syria after about 130,000 Kurdish refugees entered the country over the weekend.

On Sunday Turkish security forces clashed with Kurds protesting in solidarity with the refugees. Some protesters were reportedly trying to go to Syria to fight Islamic State (IS).

Most refugees are from Kobane, a town threatened by the advancing militants.

IS has taken over large swathes of Iraq and Syria in recent months.

Before the latest influx, there were already more than one million Syrian refugees in Turkey. They have fled since the start of the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad three years ago.

Some of the new arrivals are being sheltered in overcrowded schools, as Turkey struggles to cope with the influx.

On Friday Turkey opened a 30km (19-mile) section of the border to Syrians fleeing the town of Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab.

But on Monday only two out of nine border posts in the area remained open, the UN refugee agency UNHCR said.

TURKISH SECURITY FORCES CLASH WITH SOME DEMONSTRATORS AT ONE OF THE CROSSINGS YESTERDAY

Turkey was already struggling to cope with over a million Syrian refugees - that was before 130,000 more fled across the border at the weekend. The sheer numbers would overwhelm any country.

Added to that, they are Kurds from Syria, many of them deeply hostile to Turkey. For 30 years, Turkish forces fought Kurdish rebels in a civil war that killed 40,000 people.

The fact that Turkey is accepting tens of thousands of Kurds is a sign of how allegiances are being forced to change with the onslaught of Islamic State. But deep-seated tension between Kurds and Turks have again come to the surface, leading to Sunday's border clashes.

Turkey fears that Kurds will cross into Syria to join the Kurdish militia. The worry is that, renewed by fresh recruits, it could ally with the outlawed PKK and launch attacks on Turkish soil. All the regional complexities, added to the refugee influx, make for a precarious situation here.