Earlier the prime minister said a decision will be made in “the next week or so” following a request from the United States to consider expanding Australian air strikes from Iraq to Syria in the fight against Islamic State, or Daesh.
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24 that the air campaign will target ISIL in a zone in northern Syria bordering Turkey.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said last month that more than 37,000 foreign fighters have died during the ongoing conflict in Syria. “These conversations have gone past what was part of the original agreement to allow the US and other coalition forces to use air bases in Turkey to launch counter-ISIL strikes”, Earnest said.
Cavusoglu said the air strikes are also intended to send a message to Syrian President Bashar Assad and pressure his administration to come to the negotiating table and seek a political solution for the civil war that has gone on for four years.
Ankara is GMT+3 while Washington is GMT-4. Turkey also has openly criticized the train-and-equip program for its insistence that participants agree to focus their efforts on defeating the Islamic State, not on battling Assad. He didn’t provide details, but he has said an extensive, coordinated operation against the militant group would start soon. “Significant security concerns of their own, a foreign terrorist group, like the PKK, continues to attack them, as we saw throughout the weekend”, he added, referring to ongoing killing of Turkish security personnel in PKK attacks. Cavusoglu said 61 soldiers and police officers had been killed by the group in recent months.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he was appalled by reports that Islamic State militants had demolished a temple in Syria s ancient Palmyra.
“This is a real problem that the US and Turkey as allies will have to resolve”, Wheeler said when asked whether it might complicate US-Turkey cooperation.
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“But the situation in Syria, or in the region including Yemen and Iraq, is totally different to the nuclear deal“.
