Istanbul -
They came, they saw and they left, purportedly, without paying the bill.
Amid confusion over the plans of the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters set to cross from Turkey to fight jihadists in Kobane, a Turkish restaurant owner is up in arms after they ate a full meal without paying a hefty bill, the Hurriyet daily reported on Friday.
Hurriyet said that about 80 pershmerga fighters stopped off late on Wednesday at the Demirol motorway services restaurant just outside the city of Sanliurfa as they travelled from Iraq through Turkey to the border with Syria.
Enjoying the spicy local speciality of Urfa Kebab, as well as soup, beans and rice, the party of 80 worked up a bill of 1 040 Turkish lira ($473).
“The peshmerga group left the restaurant without paying. So far there has been no sign of payment,” a restaurant source, who was not named, told the paper.
“But we have kept the bills. And we are waiting for the payment,” the source added.
Apparently in no hurry, the group of peshmerga relaxed at the restaurant for one-and-a-half hours before heading to the Turkish border town of Suruc where they have been ever since, the source said.
“The car park was full of military vehicles,” said the source.
It took their convoy a painstakingly slow 24 hours to make the around 400 kilometre journey from the Iraqi border to Suruc, held up along the way by crowds of Turkish Kurds who greeted their arrival.
After meeting in Suruc another group of peshmerga who arrived by air, they have been waiting ever since in a military warehouse amid mounting questions about the reason for the delay.
The peshmerga are supposed to cross into Syria to reinforce Syrian Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State (IS) jihadists for control of the mainly Kurdish Syrian town of Kobane. - Sapa-AFP