President Barack Obama’s administration sought to avoid a diplomatic clash with Russian Federation and Iran Monday when officials pointedly clarified that U.S. support of an “Islamic State-free zone” in northern Syria would not include a formal no-fly zone. “Right now, we’re no longer working there, but, we used to stay in hotels and we saw them after their surgeries”, she said. “They are so injured and wounded, it’s ISIS, everybody knows without saying”, she said.
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The psychologist, who also worked in Gaziantep, a city east of Adana, could not confirm whether ISIS fighters were also being treated in hospitals in that region, an assertion made by a U.S. officer who iPolitics spoke with in Turkey’s capital, Ankara.
The Turkish government has formally approved an “understanding” that allows the US-led coalition against Islamic State to use the country’s air bases, the Turkish Foreign Ministry said on 29 July.
The psychologist said the Turkish government is definitely looking the other way while ISIS militants are treated in its hospitals before returning to combat in Syria.
The YPG is the armed wing of the Kurdish-Syrian Democratic Union Party (PYD) and has been one of the most effective forces against the Islamic State, but Ankara sees it as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has carried out numerous terrorist attacks in Turkey since the 1980s.
“We’re not out there staking out zones and doing some things that I know have been discussed in years past – no-fly zones, safe zones”.
“Turkey will show the strongest reaction to the slightest movement that threatens it”, he said. A suicide bomber, identified as a member of ISIS, killed 32 youth activists in Suruc, a town in Turkey near the Syrian border.
At a Pentagon briefing, Davis said that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter was reviewing the options that came with Turkey’s surprise announcement last week permitting the U.S.to use the Air Force base at Incirlik, Turkey, for strikes against ISIS in Syria, but decisions were weeks away.
There is a longstanding resolution that has been passed by the Turkish parliament permitting military action against Syria.
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Meanwhile, the Turkish Air Force has subsequently focused on targeting the PKK rather than the Islamic State in response to a resumption of attacks by the Kurdish group in the wake of the Suruç bombing.
