Ankara, US ease strain on Daesh, but rift remains
TURKEY ACCEPTS WASHINGTON’S PRE- OCCUPATION WITH IRAN
Turkey and the US smoothed over some differences in the fight against Daesh during a weekend visit by US Vice- President Joe Biden, but the talks heralded little in the way of deeper military cooperation between the Nato allies.
Turkey has been a reluctant partner in the US- led coalition against Daesh, refusing to take a frontline military role despite its 1,200- km border with Iraq and Syria and thereby intensifying Western concern that it is a weak link in the struggle against the insurgents.
Biden ended two days of meetings in Istanbul with no guarantee that Turkey would step up its military cooperation by, for example, allowing the use of Turkish air space or a US base in its southern town of Incirlik for coalition air strikes.
Turkish leaders, in turn, received no signal that their demands for Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s removal from power or that Washington establish a no- fly zone in Syria would be met.
But officials on both sides said the differences were more about strategy than objectives, and the meetings — including a four- hour discussion between Biden and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan — had been an opportunity to clear the air and set a sometimes acrimonious relationship on a surer footing.
“They didn’t sit there and sign their names on the bottom line on a whole host of agreements. But actually, I think we came to a much greater clarity about where we need to go from here,” a senior US official said following the talks.
Ankara and Washington were in “complete agreement” on the threat from Daesh, the official said, as well as the need for an effective ground force in Syria to work in coordination with the air strikes and push the insurgents back, building on progress made in Iraq.
Turkish and US forces will train 2,000 moderate Syrian rebels at a base in the central city of Kirsehir as part of the plan, a Turkish Foreign Min- istry official said. Turkish soldiers have also already trained some 230 Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq and will give similar assistance to a new national army unit in Baghdad in support of the government’s struggle against Daesh.
“In Iraq, Ankara and Washington’s viewpoints are very much closely aligned. The problem remains Syria, where strategically they want the same thing — a new order without Al Assad — but technically, divergences remain,” said Sinan Ulgen, head of the Centre for Economic and Foreign Policy Studies in Istanbul.