Turkey MPs back to fight Islamic State militants

Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah


Oct 02, 2014


Turkey’s parliament has approved a motion that allows the government to authorise cross-border military incursions against Isis fighters in Syria and Iraq, and allow coalition forces to use Turkish territory.

Parliament voted 298-98 in favour of the motion, which sets the legal framework for any Turkish military involvement in Iraq or Syria.

Turkey has been under pressure to play a more active role in the US-led fight , after the insurgents advanced to within clear sight of Turkish military positions on the Syrian border.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group, said Islamic State fighters were only a few hundred yards away from the town town of Ayn al-Arab, known as Kobani in Kurdish. The varying estimates, which could not be independently verified, appeared to underscore the chaotic situation on the ground.

The past two weeks , Isis launched an offensive against the predominantly Kurdish town of Kobani, forcing more than 130,000 Syrian Kurds to flee to Turkey,and has fueled a mushrooming humanitarian crisis on the border . The extremists beheaded residents in an attempt to terrorise them into submission.

The approval of parliament could also enable the US to use its large airbase at Incirlik in southern Turkey for air strikes.

Turkish Kurds have also been flowing into Syria to fight the Islamic State, multiple residents said. At the border, hundreds of cars and herds of sheep and goats were lined up behind the fence.

Meanwhile, Kurdish fighters opened offensives against Islamic State militants in several parts of northern Iraq on Tuesday, seizing control of a border crossing with Syria that has been a major conduit for the insurgents, officials said.

Turkey has long been accused of permitting the flow of jihadists and resources into Syria as well as allowing IS to traffic oil from oilfields it has captured. The government in Ankara denies the allegations.

On Thursday morning, the extremists had seized most of the western Iraqi town of Hit in Anbar province – where they control many surrounding towns – launching the assault with three suicide car bombs.

Last week, a U.S.-led coalition seeking to destroy the extremist Islamic State group began bombing the militants’ locations around Kobani, also known as Ayn Arab in Arabic. But the airstrikes haven’t halted the militants’ advance

Sources

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-29455204

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/02/isis-coalition-air-strikes-syria-turkey-kobani
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/oct/2/turkey-ponders-new-powers-to-fight-islamic-state-m/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS

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