Tri-Service

Turkey Joins Islamic State Bombing Coalition

Turkey has formally joined the international coalition against Islamic State.

The Turkish Air Force has been bombing IS positions in Syria for a number of weeks but will now be fully integrated into coalition operations. The new agreement heralds a major change after the Ankara government spent more than a year all but ignoring Islamic State.

The policy shift was brought about by a bombing on the Turkish side of the Syrian border in late July, a change that also led to US planes being cleared to fly missions from Turkey.

Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook announced the agreement, saying that “The United States and Turkey have finalised technical details for Turkey's full inclusion in the counter-ISIL coalition operations.

“This includes full integration into the coalition's air tasking order, which tracks, coordinates, and deconflicts all coalition air operations.”

It is a limited deal though and doesn’t address major problem areas like securing the long Turkish border that has become a key Islamic State supply line. It also sidesteps Turkish demands for a safe area on the Syrian side of the border, something the Kurds fear is aimed at them.

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Turkey has long been nervous of anything that could lead to the creation of a Kurdish state and has been using its anti-IS air campaign to bomb Kurdish positions too.

The Turkish government sees no distinction between Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units the YPG and the PKK Kurdish Worker’s Party that it has spent two decades fighting against inside its own borders.

This approach massively complicates the international campaign against Islamic State because the YPG is one of the few groups to make any headway against IS on the ground.

It also means the intricacies of Kurdish politics have come to play a major part in the battle against Islamic State, with Iraqi Kurdistan embroiled in an increasingly bitter political row about who should be President.