The CCTV footage captured the morning after a night of rioting in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir shows a police SWAT team forcing its way into a Kurdish public building last week.

Surveying the extensive damage to the offices, Mazhar Zumrut, head of the Syrian Aid Committee, a Kurdish humanitarian aid group, is distraught – but resigned.

“The police came in through the balcony after they broke the outside doors,” he explains, standing next to a destroyed door. “They came in through here, they broke the locks with crowbars, they broke them all.”

The Syrian Aid Committee is a local NGO that dispatches humanitarian aid to Syria, with most of the food and medicines heading to the besieged city of Kobane, where Kurdish fighters have been desperately battling Islamic State (IS) jihadists.

But amid heightened tensions between Turkish authorities and the country’s Kurdish minority, suspicious are mounting on either side.

The official motive for the police operation on the aid group’s offices was suspicions that injured Kurdish demonstrators protesting against Turkey’s policies in this Kurdish-dominated city had taken refuge inside the premises.

But many Kurdish volunteers here fear the break-in was a cover to plant surveillance devices inside the premises.

“Breaking-in is illegal. No law allows this. This is what justice looks like in Turkey. Look at how it's implemented,” declares Zumrut, echoing a common sense of discrimination among Turkey’s Kurds, who make up around 18% of the country’s population.

The battle for Kobane is fueling anger and distrust, with the Kurds alleging that they have intercepted arms deliveries from Turkey headed for IS fighters across the Turkey-Syria border.

From his office in Diyarbakir, Zumrut puts in a call to a Kurdish official inside the embattled city of Kobane. The message from their Kurdish brothers across the border is unequivocal. “Firstly, we need weapons. Secondly, we need a humanitarian corridor as soon as possible, and thirdly, we need food for the civilians,” says Enwer Muslim, a senior Syrian Kurdish leader in Kobane, his voice crackling on the line. “We will resist to the last bullet. Kobani isn't like Mossul. Kobane isn't like Raqqa,” says Muslim, referring to Iraqi and Syrian cities that have fallen to control of the IS group.

Ocalan issues a threat from jail

The plight of the Kurds in Kobane is prompting the PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party) – a Marxist group that waged a deadly, decades-long armed insurgency against the Turkish state – to warn it could take up arms again.

The fighting in Kobane is seriously threatening the peace process, which officially began in March 2013, when jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan ordered a ceasefire and the withdrawal of PKK militants from Turkish borders.

The latest PKK warning to take up arms again is a serious threat given its huge influence across Kurdish society.

“There's a PKK fighter in every family. There's a martyr in every family, every family has a member who's been in prison,” says Zubeyde Zumrut, co-leader of the BDP (Democratic Regions Party), a Kurdish political party in Turkey. “No matter what decision the PKK makes, Mr. Abdullah Ocalan will make an announcement – and the people will follow that decision,” adds Zumrut.

From his Turkish prison cell, the charismatic PKK leader - popularly known as “Apo” - has demanded the Turkish authorities intervene in Kobane before October 15. If not, the already fragile peace process could be completely derailed.

France24