A youth uses binoculars to look at Turkish army tanks holding positions, near the border with Syria, in the outskirts of the village of Elbeyi, east of the town of Kilis, in southeastern Turkey, Thursday, July 23, 2015. WASHINGTON – Turkey has agreed to let the U.S. military use a key air base near the border with Syria to launch airstrikes against the Islamic State, senior Obama administration officials said Thursday, giving a boost to the U.S.-led coalition amid a surge of violence in Turkey blamed on IS-linked militants.
The agreement, which President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan discussed in a phone call Wednesday, follows months of U.S. appeals to Turkey and delicate negotiations over the use of Incirlik and other bases by the U.S.-led coalition – a sensitive topic in Turkey. American officials said access to the base in southernTurkey would allow the U.S. to move more swiftly and nimbly to attack IS targets.
Turkey has yet to publicly confirm the agreement, and the U.S. officials requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to comment publicly. The White House declined to confirm the agreement, citing operational security concerns, but White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama and Erdogan had discussed efforts to fight IS during their phone call Wednesday.
“The two leaders did agree that we would deepen our cooperation as we take on this ISIL threat,” Josh Earnest said, using an alternative acronym for the militant group.
Turkey’s consent came as the country finds itself drawn further into the conflict by a series of deadly incidents nearTurkey’s long border with Syria, where IS controls broad swaths of territory. On Thursday, IS militants fired from Syrian territory at a Turkish military outpost, killing one Turkish soldier and prompting Turkish retaliation that killed at least one IS militant. Earlier in the week, a suicide bombing blamed on IS militants killed 32 people in Turkey, near the border.
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Turkish army tanks hold positions next to an outpost, near the border with Syria, in the outskirts of the village of Elbeyi, east of the town of Kilis, in southeastern Turkey, Thursday, July 23, 2015. Suspected Islamic State militants fired at a Turkish military outpost from a region under IS control, inside Syrian territory Thursday, killing a Turkish soldier and wounding two others, an official said. Turkish troops retaliated to the attack and at least one IS militant was killed, amid a surge of violence in Turkey following a suicide bomb attack near Turkey’s border with Syria which killed 32 people.IS militants kill Turkish soldier near Syria border
ANKARA, Turkey – Islamic State militants fired at a Turkish military outpost from Syrian territory on Thursday, killing one Turkish soldier and wounding two others, Turkish officials said. Turkish troops retaliated, killing at least one IS militant.
Suleyman Tapsiz, the governor for Kilis province, said the border outpost was attacked from a region in Syria under IS control. He said the two injured sergeants were not in serious condition.
The soldiers were attacked by five militants, the Turkish military said in a statement, adding one IS militant was “captured dead” along with a rocket launcher and an AK-47 automatic rifle.
The attack comes amid a surge of violence in Turkey following a suicide bombing Monday near Turkey’s border with Syria that killed 32 people and wounded scores. The attack has been blamed on militants linked to the Islamic State group and came amid a clampdown by Turkey on the extremist group.
Turkish officials say they have detained more than 500 people suspected of working with IS in the last six months.
Turkey had reinforced its border at Kilis a day earlier, deploying elite special forces units there, a government official told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations that bar civil servants from speaking to reporters without authorization.
Earlier Thursday, unknown assailants ambushed traffic police in the country’s mainly Kurdish southeast, killing one officer and seriously wounding a second.
Police Chief Halis Bogurcu said the officers were gunned down after they were called to a street in Diyarbakir, the region’s largest city, by people who reported a hoax traffic accident. There was no immediate claim of responsibility and an operation was launched to catch the assailants.
Kurdish militants on Wednesday claimed responsibility for killing two other policemen in retaliation for Monday’s suicide bombing, which killed many Kurds. Members of the minority group say the Turkish government did not do enough to prevent the attack.
The state-run Anadolu news agency said the youth wing of the Kurdish rebel group claimed responsibility Wednesday for killing a 45-year-old man in Istanbul. The report said the group falsely accused the man, identified as Mursel Gul, of being an IS member.