A Turkish official said talks are continuing between Ankara and Washington over whether to permit U.S. forces to use Incirlik in the fight against the Islamic State, a radical al-Qaeda offshoot also known as ISIS or ISIL that has captured parts of Syria and Iraq.
However, “right now there is not an agreement,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue.
“We are talking to our allies about what steps can be taken,” he added. “On Incirlik, there is nothing new.”
Unidentified Turkish officials quoted by Turkey’s official Anadolu News Agency also said “no new agreement” has been reached over the use of Incirlik.
Black smoke billowed over Kobane at the Turkey-Syria border Sunday following a U.S.-led coalition airstrike aimed at repelling Islamic State militants, who are advancing on the town from two sides. (AP)
The Obama administration has been pressing Turkey to allow warplanes to use Incirlik, where the United States bases aircraft under existing NATO agreements, as part of an effort by a U.S.-led coalition to roll back Islamic State gains.
U.S. officials said Sunday that Turkey had agreed to allow the coalition to use Turkish military bases for the fight against the Islamic State and to use Turkish territory as part of a training program for moderate Syrian opposition fighters.
“That’s a new commitment and one that we very much welcome,” Susan E. Rice, President Obama’s national security adviser, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Turkey has allowed the United States for some time to use Incirlik, located less than 100 miles from the Syrian border, to help with deliveries of humanitarian aid to needy civilians inside Syria. That has not changed, the Turkish official said.
Opening up the base for warplanes would greatly facilitate the United States’ capacity to launch airstrikes against the Islamic State extremists in Syria — attacks that currently originate from undisclosed locations elsewhere in the region.
It would also represent a powerful signal of Turkey’s willingness to fully engage in the international coalition formed by the United States to fight the militants.
But Turkey has insisted it will not allow attacks from its soil unless the war is also extended to include Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom Turkish leaders believe is responsible for creating the conditions that have enabled the extremists to flourish.
“The Assad regime should be the target for a real solution in Syria,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an address to Istanbul’s Marmara University on Monday. He also reiterated Turkey’s demands for the imposition of a no-fly zone and the creation of a safe haven in northern Syria, conditions that United States so far has not accepted.
Turkey did not dispute a statement Sunday by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that an agreement has been reached to train moderate Syrian rebels in Turkey, a step that Turkey long has sought. But it was not immediately clear who would train the rebels or precisely where.
The U.S. Central Command said, meanwhile, that U.S. and Saudi warplanes carried out a total of eight airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Syria on Sunday and Monday. It said U.S. fighter and bomber aircraft struck one large and one small Islamic State unit southwest of the Syrian border town of Kobane, damaged a militant staging location and destroyed a heavy machine gun position.
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Three airstrikes northeast of Kobane hit an Islamic State unit and buildings, a Central Command news release said, and an airstrike northwest of the north-central Syrian city of Raqqah, an Islamic State stronghold, struck a militant garrison. It said Saudi fighter planes participated in the airstrikes and that all aircraft exited the strike areas safely.
Up to 200,000 new refugees have fled into Turkey in recent weeks from Kobane in the face of an ongoing attack by the Islamic State. Kurdish defenders of the town, surrounded on three sides by the militants, were said to be holding their own Sunday. The Central Command reported on Sunday that coalition aircraft from the United States, Saudi Arabia and Jordan had conducted three separate airstrikes “in Kobane.”
On Friday, the United Nations called on Turkey, which has sealed its border adjacent to Kobane, to allow Kurds on the Turkish side to cross over and help defend the town. On Saturday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusogly rejected that plea, saying that “sending civilians to the war is a crime. We cannot risk the lives of these people.”
U.S. defense officials said Sunday that they expect clearance to use Incirlik Air Base, a U.S.-built facility about 35 miles inland from the eastern edge of the Mediterranean Sea, near Turkey’s border with Syria, for airstrikes against the Islamist militants. Incirlik is a joint facility where both the Turkish and U.S. air forces operate.
Hagel said last week that use of Incirlik for Syria missions was one of the key U.S. requests. It was discussed with Turkish officials during a visit there Thursday and Friday by retired Gen. John Allen, Obama’s special envoy to the coalition against the Islamic State, and State Department diplomat Brett McGurk.
A Defense Department planning team is expected to travel to Turkey this week to finalize the plans, U.S. officials said.
Rice said that Turkey has joined Saudi Arabia — a country with which it has strained relations — in agreeing to the training program. “They have said that their facilities inside of Turkey can be used by the coalition forces — American and otherwise — to engage in activities inside of Iraq and Syria,” she said.
U.S. officials have said that it will take several months to vet up to 5,000 opposition fighters, and up to an additional eight months for the training to be completed.
Turkey has been reluctant to sign on to the coalition against the Islamic State, which it believes has diverted attention from the effort to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Its government has long been critical of delays in the U.S. training program.
In an interview published Sunday in Turkey, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that “this training and equipping activity is a delayed one. . . . Frankly speaking, if the United States” and Western countries “had two years ago arrived at the point they have arrived at today and the moderate opposition had been supported . . . ISIL would not have had a space to use and the [Assad] regime would not have had the power to commit massacres.”
The United States has resisted Turkey’s call for the coalition to establish a buffer zone along the Turkey-Syria border, where rebels could train and be resupplied and an estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees now in Turkey could be housed.
“We don’t see it at this point as essential to the goal of degrading and ultimately destroying ISIL,” Rice said, “but we’ll continue to talk to the Turks and entertain any specific proposals that they may have.”
In an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he had not been asked to set up a no-fly zone. But Dempsey said he anticipated that “there could be circumstances in the future where that would be part of the campaign.”
Although Obama has pledged that there will be no U.S. ground troops in the fight against the Islamic State, which has seized massive amounts of territory in Syria and Iraq, Dempsey said in recent congressional testimony that he could envision circumstances where he would recommend sending U.S.military advisers to accompany front-line Iraqi troops. The advisers are currently restricted to joint Iraqi-U.S. operations centers in Baghdad and Irbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdish region.
Asked whether he could see a change in that policy, Dempsey said Sunday that “there will be circumstances when the answer to that question will likely be yes, but I haven’t encountered one right now.”
As for what those circumstances might be, Dempsey said that when Iraqi troops are ready to go on the offensive against the militants in an attempt to retake the strategic northern Iraqi city of Mosul, “my instinct at this point is that that will require a different kind of advising and assisting because of the complexity of that fight.”
Dempsey revealed Sunday that the United States at one point recently in Iraq had called in Apache helicopters to protect Baghdad’s airport against the Islamic State.
He said on ABC that militants were within “20 or 25 kilometers” of the airport and had “overrun the Iraqi unit. It was a straight shot to the airport. So we’re not going to allow that to happen. We need that airport.”
The Associated Press reported that a triple-suicide bombing Sunday in Iraq’s Diyala province killed at least 58 people and that the Islamic State claimed it had ordered the attack, carried out by three foreign jihadists. The authenticity of the online statement could not be independently verified, but it was posted on a Twitter account frequently used by the militant group.
Also, authorities said a roadside bomb killed the police chief of the western Anbar province, according to the AP.
DeYoung reported from Washington. William Branigin and Sebastian Payne in Washington contributed to this report.
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