The difference in priorities was on display this week.
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“Access to Turkish air bases, such as Incirlik, will increase the coalition’s operational efficiency against ISIL”, said Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman. Also still to be resolved in talks with Turkey, officials say, are how deep into Syria the area might extend and how quickly U.S. warplanes will begin flying combat missions from Turkish bases.
The Turkish government announced last week that it would, for the first time, engage in airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria, following a suicide bombing in the border town of Suruç that left 32 dead, mostly Kurds organizing to help rebuild the battered border town of Kobani, Syria, which lies across the border from Suruç.
While so far Turkey has shown less aggression towards the PYD, the Kurds accuse Ankara of aiding Syrian rebel groups to fight them. A week of violence roiled markets, with the lira hitting a record low and stocks and bonds sliding. “Not only they attack the PKK, but Turkish army has already shelled YPG controlled villages in Rojava”, Kurdman said. That was before the PKK killed two policemen in Turkey and took credit for it, which the officials said was the reason Turkey struck the Kurds. The Turkish government considered the situation a major threat to national security, amid speculation that the United States was supporting the creation of a Kurdish state, stretching from northern Iraq to the Mediterranean.
Until this week, Turkey had refused to allow the U.S.to launch airstrikes against Islamic State jihadists from its territory unless Washington supported the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.S. continues to carry the bulk of the military might providing the most airstrikes. “We have to sit down with the Turks and figure it out”, a senior Obama administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said the military operations were a manoeuvre to oust the HDP from parliament in a snap poll and impose effective one-party government. The very next month, Claudia Roth, then-deputy speaker of the German Parliament, noted that the Turkish government was aiding ISIS.
Last, Turkey appears to have reached an understanding with the United States that a safe zone will be created from where the IS will be pushed out. “We strongly condemn the terrorist attacks”, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation chief Jens Stoltenberg said after the meeting of the alliance’s ambassadors in Brussels.
A Syrian government crackdown on a pro-democracy movement in 2011 sparked a civil war.
The Syrian Kurdish fighters have been the most successful of the forces battling the Islamic State and have swept the militants out of several strategic strongholds in Syria.
The PKK targets inside Turkey were in the Sirnak province in the far southeast of the country, reports said.
ULGEN: What Turkey wants to do with this is essentially two things. The outcome was inconclusive and a repeat election may be needed soon.
Other analysts say that if the Kurds in Syria managed to have a united autonomy akin to that which was established in Iraq after the downfall of previous Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussain, the Kurds in Turkey could be emboldened to take the same path toward splitting from Turkey.
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The leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish HDP party, Selahatting Demirtas, has denounced Ankara’s attempts to establish a “safe zone” inside Syria, and said strikes on IS targets were a cover for attacking Kurdish positions.
