Mursitpinar, Turkey-Syria border: While the world watches in horror as Kurdish forces stage a desperate defence of the Syrian-Kurdish town of Kobane, Turkey stations its tanks and troops on the border and then turns its back on the battle.
Where Kurds see an impending massacre as Islamic State pushes to control Kobane, Turkey sees an opportunity to weaken its historic enemy, the Kurds, as it uses the crisis to reiterate its demands that the United States expand the focus of its military coalition to target both IS and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Neither the US nor Turkey appear willing to compromise and both seem prepared to see another Syrian town lost to Islamic State in their three-year-long standoff over Turkey's desire to see Dr Assad ousted as Syria's leader.
There is building fury on the Turkish-Syrian border over Turkey's intransigence and the accusations that Turkey is helping the Islamic State in order to see Kobane fall grow by the day. At least 19 people have been killed in clashes between Kurdish protesters and Turkish security forces over Turkey's refusal to act.
"People are sleeping here in the villages along the border in order to form a defence against the Islamic State should they breach the Turkish border," said Ismail Osman, 44, from Ankara, who was standing with hundreds of people watching Kobane yesterday from a nearby field.
"We are from all over Turkey and we feel we must be here because the Turkish government is doing nothing to help Kobane, all they are doing is supporting the Islamists."
Kurds who have gathered here to show their support for Kobane are loath to see Turkish ground troops go into the town for fear they will first fight the Islamic State, then turn their weapons on the Kurdish YPG forces.
Instead, they have asked for weapons and reinforcements to be allowed to cross Turkey's border into Syria to bolster YPG fighters who are seriously outnumbered and outgunned.
Turkey says it will only do this if the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the PYD, break all ties with the Syrian regime and join the Free Syrian Army in its fight against Dr Assad, local media reports.
In July 2012, just over a year into Syria's brutal civil war, the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and PYD took control of the Kurdish regions of northern Syria – Kobane, Afrin and Jazeera – a move that Turkey is keen to see overturned and another key demand it has made on the Kurds in return for its assistance in Kobane.
And although Turkey is 18 months into a peace agreement with the PYD and risks undoing the recent period of calm by turning its back on Kobane, the decades-long guerrilla war waged by the PKK against Turkey is very much on the mind of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he maintains his hardline stance.
The only point all parties agree on is that air strikes alone will not save Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arab. The US-led military coalition ramped up its air strikes for a second day, with US Central Command saying there were 14 strikes on Wednesday and 19 bombing raids near the town.
"Indications are that Kurdish militia there continue to control most of the city and are holding out against ISIL," Central Command said in a statement, destroying five armed vehicles, an IS supply depot, a command centre, a logistics compound and eight occupied barracks.
With each massive air strike, as the giant black cloud lifted slowly into the air, Kurds clapped and cheered, their eyes trained on the sky for the next one.
And with each rain of Islamic State mortars on their besieged town, as the street fighting grew louder and more intense, they moved closer and closer to the border, their hands raised, shouting words of support for their fighters.
The air strikes are helping the Kurdish forces to push back the IS militants, a spokesman in Kobane, Idris Nassan, told Reuters.
"They are now outside the entrances of the city," Mr Nassan said. "This is their biggest retreat since their entry into the city and we can consider this as the beginning of the countdown of their retreat from the area."
But the Kurdish forces cannot hold out forever. If the YPG cannot prevail, Islamic State will control another key border crossing between Turkey and Syria and a large swathe of land to its self-declared capital of Raqqa, prompting another flow of refugees into Turkey – now home to nearly two million Syrian refugees – and raising further security concerns.
"Ankara is fast approaching a choice between deploying heavy weapons to defend Kobane or accepting an [IS] takeover of the enclave," wrote Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish research program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"The latter eventuality would increase Turkey's exposure to [IS], which already controls nearly half of the 510-mile [820-kilometre] border with Syria."
