Turkish warplanes strike Islamic State in Syria as part of U.S. coalition
ISTANBUL 29 AUGUST, 2015.
Turkish warplanes struck seven Islamic State targets north of
Aleppo, Syria in 24 hours in the first Turkish contribution to a U.S.
led coalition to weaken the proto-caliphate’s grasp on much of eastern
Syria, according to the Turkish Foreign Ministry.
“Our jets
started last night to carry out air operations with coalition forces
against IS targets in Syria which pose a threat to our security too,”
the ministry said in a statement Saturday.
Turkish officials
speaking on background said the strikes came in two groups. Overnight
Friday, two planes struck three targets. Saturday, another two planes
struck four targets in the vicinity of northern Aleppo, where the
Islamic State has been threatening areas held by moderate rebel forces
controlling the border crossing that connects Turkey to Aleppo,
including the key border city of Azaz.
“Yesterday two planes
belonging to Turkish Air Forces covered with fire three targets and
today with two planes, four targets in Northern Aleppo, the IS areas,”
according to a high level security official who asked that his name not
be used due to Turkish government regulations on discussing military
operations.
The United States and Turkey have been trying to come
to an official agreement over the last few weeks on the scope of
Turkey’s participation in a multi-country coalition that has been
bombing the group in both Syria and Iraq for over a year and the
weekend’s strikes appear to suggest that a formal agreement had been
reached.
“We commend Turkey for its participation in counter-ISIL
air operations alongside other coalition nations in the international
campaign to degrade and ultimately defeat ISIL,” Pentagon press
secretary Peter Cook said in a statement, using an alternate name for
the Islamic State.
On Aug. 24, both countries announced that they
had completed an “air tasking agreement” to allow coordination between
the various countries involved with striking militant targets.
Turkey
struck a small number of Islamic State targets on July 24, apparently
independently of the coalition, followed by scores of attacks on the
militant Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, mostly in
the northern Iraq mountains around Qandil that serves at that group’s
base.
Turkey had expressed reluctance in the past to directly
confront the Islamic State because of the success by PKK-linked
militants in Syria in battling the group along the Syrian-Turkish
border. Turkish officials have repeatedly described the PKK, which
fought a decades long insurgency against Turkey that appears on the
verge of resuming, and the Islamic State as equal threats to Turkish
security.
The urgency of Turkish participation may increase due
to a several day old offensive by the Islamic State against moderate
U.S.-backed rebels north of Syria’s largest city of Aleppo that has seen
several key villages fall to the group as it appears to pushing to take
control of the border crossing at Azaz, currently controlled by a mix
of groups hostile to both the Syrian regime and Islamic State.
The loss of Azaz would isolate the rebels holding much of eastern Aleppo
from resupply from Turkey as well as replace the loss of the Tal Aybad
border crossing, captured from the Islamic State late last month by a
mix of Syrian rebels and Kurdish militants.
The Turkish strikes,
which occurred in area of the heavy fighting with the Islamic State,
appear to have been designed to support the rebels against that
offensive.
Since Thursday, the Islamic State has captured five
small villages while pushing on the strategically critical town of
Marea, which some news outlets were reporting had fallen partially under
the control of the group, though that could not be immediately
confirmed.
The fighting has taken place in an area the Turkish
government refers to a security zone that will serve both as a buffer to
keep Kurdish forces from connecting territory captured from either the
Islamic State or from the Syrian regime, as well as serve as an area
that some of the estimated two million Syrian refugees inside Turkey can
eventually return to if the area can be protected against both the
Islamic State and attacks by the Syrian regime.
Duygu Guvenc in Ankara contributed.
Mitchell Prothero is a McClatchy special correspondent.