By Ruth Pollard
Reyhanli, Turkey: As Islamic State extremists raised their black flag in the besieged Syrian border town of Kobane last year after a brutal three-week onslaught, the Turkish military - stationed just a kilometre away - turned their backs to the unfolding tragedy.
As we gathered journalists watched, hundreds of Turkish soldiers and a long line of tanks positioned along a nearby ridge ignored the thunder of IS shelling that was destroying the Kurdish town street by street, forcing 160,000 people to flee in a matter of days.
Instead, the soldiers focused their attention on the small bands of Kurdish protesters gathered on the hill next to the Mursitpinar border crossing to watch and worry about the plight of their loved ones still inside Kobane, and those of us reporting on the growing humanitarian crisis.
Each day the Turkish soldiers would fire up their tanks and Armoured Personnel Carriers and storm towards the crowd of civilians, shooting volley after volley of choking tear gas and water cannons straight at protesters and journalists, chasing us over the rocky hills and into the small village nearby, where we found shelter wherever we could.
The black flag of Islamic State flies over the town of Kobane in Syria in October 2014.Credit: AP
It was agonising for the Kurds who gathered on the hill - with that much firepower, the Turks could have easily crossed into Kobane and helped the Kurdish YPG fighters who, in the end, with the backing of air strikes from the US-led coalition against IS, fought off the jihadists and reclaimed their ruined town.
That Turkey chose to prioritise its opposition to the YPG and its parent group, the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, over the unfolding disaster in Kobane only deepened the bitter divisions between Turkey and its own Kurdish citizens.
And so it is with Turkey's latest actions, when on Tuesday it downed a Russian warplane that violated its airspace for 17 seconds while on a bombing raid along the mountainous border with Syria.
Rather than fully committing to the US-led coalition against IS and a diplomatic solution to Syria's five-year civil war, Turkey has allowed its long-stated desire to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power to spoil the chance of a diplomatic breakthrough and the possibility that Russia may be convinced to reduce its support for the Assad regime.
Kurdish protesters at the border with Syria flee from Turkish teargas after trying to watch the fighting in the border town of Kobane in October 2014.Credit: Andrew Quilty/Oculi
Russia has reacted with fury, cutting all military ties with Turkey and moving its long-range air defence missiles – S-400s – to its base in Syria's coastal province of Latakia, 50 kilometres from the Turkish border and less than 200 kilometres from the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Experts say the S-400s are capable of striking targets within a 400-kilometre range.
Turkey's actions – believed to be the first time a NATO country has downed a Russian plane in 50 years – have also significantly worsened the situation on the ground for civilians in Syria, who are enduring not just Syrian regime airstrikes but also intensified Russian attacks.
The Russian Sukhoi Su-24 downed by Turkish F-16s.Credit: AP
Russia unleashes new horrors
Over tea in a cafe in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, Syrian medical volunteer Mohamed Gharib reaches for his phone and opens a photograph of the latest victim of this brutal war to have caused an ache in his heart.
Russia has robust missile capabilities as well. A Russian S-400 air defence missile system seen during a military parade in Red Square.Credit: AP
Just eight years old, she lies on a hospital bed, her head bloodied and, underneath the bandages, shredded by shrapnel.
"She is from the Turkmen Mountain," he says. "Both her parents were killed in the attack and she survived but she was critically injured … right now I am not sure if she is dead or alive."
An explosion rocks the Syrian town of Kobane during a battle between Islamic State and the Kurdish forces last year.Credit: Getty Images
What tears at him, he says, is the thought that she is alone, with no one by her bedside.
"We thought it could not get worse, but since Turkey shot down the Russian plane the airstrikes have intensified – our minds cannot expand enough to imagine what more horror we will face."
Women fighters from the Kurdish YPG militia. Turkey's concerns about Kurdish military strength have hindered the formation of a coalition to check Islamic State.Credit: Getty Images
The 43-year-old former primary school teacher from the Aleppo countryside has harsh words for the international community, who he says have abandoned Syrian civilians.
"We have given up on talking to governments, now we are just appealing to their people – don't we, as Syrians, have a right to live?"
Footage supplied by the Free Syrian Army's Fursan al-Haq Brigade shows US-supplied TOW anti-tank missiles striking Syrian government tanks in the country's north near the Turkish border.
Every day for the last four years, Mr Gharib has risen early to check his phone for the latest numbers of injured and dead.
Now based in Reyhanli, just across the border from the Syrian provinces of Aleppo and Idlib, he says the local hospital receives at least 60 seriously injured patients each day from Syria.
'Our enemy is Islamic State': French President Francois Hollande meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Thursday.Credit: AP
This is, Mr Gharib says, double the number from before Russia began its campaign of air strikes on September 30 to prop up the Assad regime and improve its negotiating position ahead of any political talks.
How many casualties are there today, I ask?
Footage supplied by the Free Syrian Army's Fursan al-Haq Brigade shows a Syrian tank near Ariha, in Syria's Idlib province, moments before a TOW missile strike.
He gets out his phone and counts: seventeen. And it is only midday. By the time this day is over, there will be triple that number.
"Most of the victims are civilians because they are targeting hospitals, markets and other places where large numbers of people gather," he says, "and more and more are dying – if 10 died before, now 20, 30 will die because of the intensity of the air strikes."
Footage supplied by the Free Syrian Army's Fursan al-Haq Brigade shows the moment of a US-supplied TOW missile's impact.
Russia denies it is targeting civilian neighbourhoods and insists it is going after "terrorist groups".
Repeating what many Syrians have told Fairfax Media over the least week, Mr Gharib says that instead of the one or two fighter jets the Syrian regime sends to attack a town, Russia deploys between 10 and 12 warplanes.
Lieutenant-Colonel Fares al-Bayoush of the Fursan al-Haq Brigade, a unit of the Free Syrian Army. Credit: Ruth Pollard
"You cannot imagine how much worse the casualties and deaths are," he says. "They attack from the sky and then the Syrian and Iranian militia advance."
Most analysis of the Russian air strikes indicate they have almost exclusively targeted towns held by Syrian opposition groups fighting to overthrow the Assad regime rather than IS targets, although they reportedly conducted airstrikes on Raqqa, the de facto IS capital in Syria, on Thursday.
"The expansion of Russian military activity in the region underscores Russia's primary grand strategic objective, to assert itself as a great power rival to the US and a direct rival to NATO," the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War reported.
"Russia's escalation, which increased sharply after the IS attacks in Paris on November 13, accelerated further with the transit of long-range strategic bombers around Western Europe's coast and the launch of cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea on November 20."
Britain scrambled jets as Russian long-range bombers passed near its airspace, while Russian long-range bombers and cruise missiles from the Caspian disrupted air traffic in Iraq, including US-led anti-IS coalition flights out of Iraqi Kurdistan, as well as disrupting civilian air traffic into and out of Lebanon, the Institute stated.
Amid the escalating tensions in the region, French President Francois Hollande visited Moscow on Thursday, announcing overnight he had reached agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on coordinating anti-IS strikes in Syria.
At the same time, British Prime Minister David Cameron spent the afternoon attempting to convince his parliament to support British air strikes against IS in Syria.
Hitting tanks - with help from Washington
The television in the office of Lieutenant-Colonel Fares al-Bayoush, who leads the 1350-strong Fursan al-Haq (Knights of Right) Brigade of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), is broadcasting the aftermath of the latest Russian air strikes: on an aid convoy near a refugee camp in the Syrian border town of Azaz.
Sirens are wailing, trucks are on fire and smoke billows into the sky as civilians attempted to contain the blaze and treat the injured. At least seven people died in the attack, local reports indicated.
Colonel Bayoush's brigade, which has its base in the town of Kafranbel in Idlib Province, was one of the first to receive supplies of US anti-tank TOW missiles, as well as Qatari and US-funded training outside Syria.
They have used the TOWs to stop the advances of Assad regime fighters and win back territory, especially in northern Hama and Aleppo provinces, where they are also fighting IS.
One day in early October, the Syrian Army, emboldened by Russian air strikes, began an advance on rebel-held positions in Hama using a wide arc of tanks. Over the next two days, Colonel Bayoush says, his brigade destroyed dozens of Syrian tanks and military vehicles with the TOW missiles.
"This shows if the FSA gets enough support we can achieve significant results on the battlefield – yes, the Russians can conduct their air strikes, but we can prevent the troops from advancing on the ground … just last week we liberated three villages from Daesh [IS]," he says.
"With a few anti-aircraft missiles we could substantially change the situation on the ground."
But while there have been some victories, closer to home, essential services are having to adapt in order to survive. After being targeted by regime and Russian air strikes 15 times, Kafranbel's main hospital is moving underground, Colonel Bayoush says, showing video of a small network of tunnels that will soon become a fully-functioning medical facility.
"What else can we do?" he asks. "As a surgeon, when you hear a fighter jet overhead, do you want to be looking down at your patient or upwards towards the sky?"