MIDDLE EAST
Turkish Inaction on ISIS Advance Dismays the U.S.
By MARK LANDLER, ANNE BARNARD and ERIC SCHMITTOCT. 7, 2014
WASHINGTON — As fighters with the Islamic State bore down Tuesday on the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border, President Obama’s plan to fight the militant group without being drawn deeper into the Syrian civil war was coming under acute strain.
While Turkish troops watched the fighting in Kobani through a chicken-wire fence, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that the town was about to fall and Kurdish fighters warned of an impending blood bath if they were not reinforced — fears the United States shares.
But Mr. Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey would not get more deeply involved in the conflict with the Islamic State unless the United States agreed to give greater support to rebels trying to unseat the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. That has deepened tensions with President Obama, who would like Turkey to take stronger action against the Islamic State and to leave the fight against Mr. Assad out of it.
Even as it stepped up airstrikes against the militants Tuesday, the Obama administration was frustrated by what it regards as Turkey’s excuses for not doing more militarily. Officials note, for example, that the American-led coalition, with its heavy rotation of flights and airstrikes, has effectively imposed a no-fly zone over northern Syria already, so Mr. Erdogan’s demand for such a zone rings hollow.
“There’s growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to act to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its border,” a senior administration official said. “After all the fulminating about Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe, they’re inventing reasons not to act to avoid another catastrophe.
“This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s throw from their border,” said the official, who spoke anonymously to avoid publicly criticizing an ally.
Secretary of State John Kerry has had multiple phone calls in the last 72 hours with Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to try to resolve the border crisis, American officials said.
For Mr. Obama, a split with Turkey would jeopardize his efforts to hold together a coalition of Sunni Muslim countries to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. While Turkey is not the only country that might put the ouster of Mr. Assad ahead of defeating the radical Sunnis of the Islamic State, the White House has strongly argued that the immediate threat is from the militants.
But if Turkey remains a holdout, it could cause other fissures in the coalition. It is not only a NATO ally but the main transit route for foreigners seeking to enlist in the ranks of the Islamic State.
Ultimately, American officials said, the Islamic State cannot be pushed back without ground troops that are drawn from the ranks of the Syrian opposition. But until those troops are trained, equipped and put in the field, something that will take some time, officials said, Turkey can play a vital role.
“We have anticipated that it will be easier to protect population centers and to support offensives on the ground in Iraq, where we have partners” in the Kurdish pesh merga fighters and the Iraqi Army, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “Clearly, in Syria, it will take more time to develop the type of partners on the ground with whom we can coordinate.”
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, said he was confident that the president’s recently appointed special envoy for Syria, retired Gen. John R. Allen, would be able to resolve some logistical issues regarding the Turkish military’s participation in the coalition. But he acknowledged that Turkey’s differing view of the need to oust Mr. Assad was likely to come up.
While the diplomacy went ahead, the United States took pains to emphasize its support for the embattled Kurds in Kobani.
The military’s Central Command confirmed on Tuesday that coalition aircraft had carried out five airstrikes against Islamic State positions in the Kobani area in the past two days, destroying or damaging armed vehicles, artillery, a tank and troop positions.
The raids brought the number of airstrikes in and around Kobani to 18 — out of more than 100 in Syria altogether — since the air campaign was extended from Iraq to Syria.
But Kurdish fighters in Kobani said they were running out of ammunition and could not prevail without infusions of troops and arms from Turkey. Independent analysts and some influential members of Congress concurred, deriding the airstrikes in Kobani as too little, too late.
“This is yet another situation in which the Islamic State’s personnel and heavy weapons have been readily visible and vulnerable to U.S. airstrikes,” Representative Ed Royce, a California Republican who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “Instead of decisive action, the ISIL advance was met with only a handful of airstrikes. This morning’s escalated efforts may be too late.”
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, issued an unusually strong call for the world to take “concrete action” to prevent Kobani from falling into control of the Islamic State.
“The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so. We need to act now,” he said.
The fight along the sloping hills of Kobani, a Kurdish farming enclave, comes as neighboring Iraq is still groping to translate aerial bombardments against the Islamic State into momentum on the ground. It is further fragmenting Syria, cutting off Kurdish areas in the northeast.
And it has left the Kurds feeling abandoned, even though they are the sort of vulnerable minority group that Mr. Obama has made a priority of protecting — political moderates who have women fighting alongside men and have provided refuge for internally displaced Syrians of many ethnicities.
“Now I can see the shelling is getting closer to my neighborhood,” said Mahmoud Nabo, 35, a Syrian Kurd, pointing to the western side of town, which he fled Monday as Kurdish fighters urged civilians to evacuate. “We thought everything would stop after the first airstrike on ISIS, but now it is closer and more frequent.”
Analysts say the Kurds of Kobani are being held hostage as Mr. Erdogan seeks to wrest concessions not only from Washington but also from Kurdish leaders, his longtime domestic foes.
Some background on goals, tactics and the potential long-term threat to the United States from the militant group known as the Islamic State. Video by Natalia V. Osipova and Christian Roman on Publish Date September 10, 2014. Photo by Reuters.
The aim, said Soner Cagaptay, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is to weaken Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., in peace talks with the Turkish government.
Turkey also wants the Kurdish fighters to denounce Mr. Assad and openly join the Syrian insurgents fighting him. But the fighters and local political leaders accepted control of Kurdish areas when Mr. Assad’s forces withdrew earlier in the Syrian war, and have focused more on self-rule and protecting their territory than on fighting the government. In some places they have fought alongside government troops.
The impasse leaves Kobani isolated. Some refugees are literally pressed against the fence, unwilling to cross because they cannot take their livestock, and sometimes blocked by the Turkish authorities, who have also stopped Syrian and Turkish Kurds from crossing into Syria to fight the Islamic State.
Tear gas wafted near the border on Tuesday, as Kurdish men packed the streets of the town of Suruc to protest Turkish policy; demonstrations broke out in several cities across Turkey. In Diyarbakir, at least 10 people were killed and more than 20 were injured in clashes between sympathizers of a pro-Kurdish party and a group known for its Islamic affiliations, while the authorities ordered schools to close in several southeastern cities, the Haberturk news channel reported.
On one small stretch of the border near Kobani, a fleeing Syrian Kurd, Omar Alloush, said a Turkish soldier had looked on as an Islamic State fighter addressed Syrian Kurds across the border fence, telling them they were welcome to return as long as they abided by the group’s extreme interpretation of Islam.
“We will never trust those people,” Mr. Alloush, a member of a Kurdish political party in Kobani, said by telephone.
Yet another hillside spectator, Avni Altindag, a Kurd from Suruc, said the Islamic State was stronger than a few air raids.
He pointed to the men watching the smoke rising over Kobani, who were chanting for the People’s Protection Committees, a Kurdish group known as Y.P.G. that is battling the Islamic State in the town’s streets. “They used to come with high expectations of strikes against ISIS, but all are disappointed,” he said.
Mr. Altindag blamed Turkey. “They don’t want to help what they say is their enemy,” he said. “This is why it is in Turkey’s favor that Kobani falls to ISIS.”
Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by Karam Shoumali from Mursitpinar, Turkey; Somini Sengupta from the United Nations; Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul; and Alan Cowell from London.
A version of this article appears in print on October 8, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkish Inaction on ISIS Advance Dismays the U.S..
Turkish Inaction on ISIS Advance Dismays the U.S.
By MARK LANDLER, ANNE BARNARD and ERIC SCHMITTOCT. 7, 2014
WASHINGTON — As fighters with the Islamic State bore down Tuesday on the Syrian town of Kobani on the Turkish border, President Obama’s plan to fight the militant group without being drawn deeper into the Syrian civil war was coming under acute strain.
While Turkish troops watched the fighting in Kobani through a chicken-wire fence, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said that the town was about to fall and Kurdish fighters warned of an impending blood bath if they were not reinforced — fears the United States shares.
But Mr. Erdogan said Tuesday that Turkey would not get more deeply involved in the conflict with the Islamic State unless the United States agreed to give greater support to rebels trying to unseat the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. That has deepened tensions with President Obama, who would like Turkey to take stronger action against the Islamic State and to leave the fight against Mr. Assad out of it.
Even as it stepped up airstrikes against the militants Tuesday, the Obama administration was frustrated by what it regards as Turkey’s excuses for not doing more militarily. Officials note, for example, that the American-led coalition, with its heavy rotation of flights and airstrikes, has effectively imposed a no-fly zone over northern Syria already, so Mr. Erdogan’s demand for such a zone rings hollow.
“There’s growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to act to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its border,” a senior administration official said. “After all the fulminating about Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe, they’re inventing reasons not to act to avoid another catastrophe.
“This isn’t how a NATO ally acts while hell is unfolding a stone’s throw from their border,” said the official, who spoke anonymously to avoid publicly criticizing an ally.
Secretary of State John Kerry has had multiple phone calls in the last 72 hours with Turkey’s prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, to try to resolve the border crisis, American officials said.
For Mr. Obama, a split with Turkey would jeopardize his efforts to hold together a coalition of Sunni Muslim countries to fight the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL. While Turkey is not the only country that might put the ouster of Mr. Assad ahead of defeating the radical Sunnis of the Islamic State, the White House has strongly argued that the immediate threat is from the militants.
But if Turkey remains a holdout, it could cause other fissures in the coalition. It is not only a NATO ally but the main transit route for foreigners seeking to enlist in the ranks of the Islamic State.
Ultimately, American officials said, the Islamic State cannot be pushed back without ground troops that are drawn from the ranks of the Syrian opposition. But until those troops are trained, equipped and put in the field, something that will take some time, officials said, Turkey can play a vital role.
“We have anticipated that it will be easier to protect population centers and to support offensives on the ground in Iraq, where we have partners” in the Kurdish pesh merga fighters and the Iraqi Army, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. “Clearly, in Syria, it will take more time to develop the type of partners on the ground with whom we can coordinate.”
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, Mr. Obama’s spokesman, Josh Earnest, said he was confident that the president’s recently appointed special envoy for Syria, retired Gen. John R. Allen, would be able to resolve some logistical issues regarding the Turkish military’s participation in the coalition. But he acknowledged that Turkey’s differing view of the need to oust Mr. Assad was likely to come up.
While the diplomacy went ahead, the United States took pains to emphasize its support for the embattled Kurds in Kobani.
The military’s Central Command confirmed on Tuesday that coalition aircraft had carried out five airstrikes against Islamic State positions in the Kobani area in the past two days, destroying or damaging armed vehicles, artillery, a tank and troop positions.
The raids brought the number of airstrikes in and around Kobani to 18 — out of more than 100 in Syria altogether — since the air campaign was extended from Iraq to Syria.
But Kurdish fighters in Kobani said they were running out of ammunition and could not prevail without infusions of troops and arms from Turkey. Independent analysts and some influential members of Congress concurred, deriding the airstrikes in Kobani as too little, too late.
“This is yet another situation in which the Islamic State’s personnel and heavy weapons have been readily visible and vulnerable to U.S. airstrikes,” Representative Ed Royce, a California Republican who heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement. “Instead of decisive action, the ISIL advance was met with only a handful of airstrikes. This morning’s escalated efforts may be too late.”
Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, issued an unusually strong call for the world to take “concrete action” to prevent Kobani from falling into control of the Islamic State.
“The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so. We need to act now,” he said.
The fight along the sloping hills of Kobani, a Kurdish farming enclave, comes as neighboring Iraq is still groping to translate aerial bombardments against the Islamic State into momentum on the ground. It is further fragmenting Syria, cutting off Kurdish areas in the northeast.
And it has left the Kurds feeling abandoned, even though they are the sort of vulnerable minority group that Mr. Obama has made a priority of protecting — political moderates who have women fighting alongside men and have provided refuge for internally displaced Syrians of many ethnicities.
“Now I can see the shelling is getting closer to my neighborhood,” said Mahmoud Nabo, 35, a Syrian Kurd, pointing to the western side of town, which he fled Monday as Kurdish fighters urged civilians to evacuate. “We thought everything would stop after the first airstrike on ISIS, but now it is closer and more frequent.”
Analysts say the Kurds of Kobani are being held hostage as Mr. Erdogan seeks to wrest concessions not only from Washington but also from Kurdish leaders, his longtime domestic foes.
Some background on goals, tactics and the potential long-term threat to the United States from the militant group known as the Islamic State. Video by Natalia V. Osipova and Christian Roman on Publish Date September 10, 2014. Photo by Reuters.
The aim, said Soner Cagaptay, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is to weaken Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., in peace talks with the Turkish government.
Turkey also wants the Kurdish fighters to denounce Mr. Assad and openly join the Syrian insurgents fighting him. But the fighters and local political leaders accepted control of Kurdish areas when Mr. Assad’s forces withdrew earlier in the Syrian war, and have focused more on self-rule and protecting their territory than on fighting the government. In some places they have fought alongside government troops.
The impasse leaves Kobani isolated. Some refugees are literally pressed against the fence, unwilling to cross because they cannot take their livestock, and sometimes blocked by the Turkish authorities, who have also stopped Syrian and Turkish Kurds from crossing into Syria to fight the Islamic State.
Tear gas wafted near the border on Tuesday, as Kurdish men packed the streets of the town of Suruc to protest Turkish policy; demonstrations broke out in several cities across Turkey. In Diyarbakir, at least 10 people were killed and more than 20 were injured in clashes between sympathizers of a pro-Kurdish party and a group known for its Islamic affiliations, while the authorities ordered schools to close in several southeastern cities, the Haberturk news channel reported.
On one small stretch of the border near Kobani, a fleeing Syrian Kurd, Omar Alloush, said a Turkish soldier had looked on as an Islamic State fighter addressed Syrian Kurds across the border fence, telling them they were welcome to return as long as they abided by the group’s extreme interpretation of Islam.
“We will never trust those people,” Mr. Alloush, a member of a Kurdish political party in Kobani, said by telephone.
Yet another hillside spectator, Avni Altindag, a Kurd from Suruc, said the Islamic State was stronger than a few air raids.
He pointed to the men watching the smoke rising over Kobani, who were chanting for the People’s Protection Committees, a Kurdish group known as Y.P.G. that is battling the Islamic State in the town’s streets. “They used to come with high expectations of strikes against ISIS, but all are disappointed,” he said.
Mr. Altindag blamed Turkey. “They don’t want to help what they say is their enemy,” he said. “This is why it is in Turkey’s favor that Kobani falls to ISIS.”
Mark Landler and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington, and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon. Reporting was contributed by Karam Shoumali from Mursitpinar, Turkey; Somini Sengupta from the United Nations; Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul; and Alan Cowell from London.
A version of this article appears in print on October 8, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkish Inaction on ISIS Advance Dismays the U.S..
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