DEVELOPMENTS
• Fighting continued Monday around the Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish town near the Turkish border that is under siege by Islamic State militants. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an Islamic State suicide bomber detonated a car filled with explosives in the northern part of the town near the border. Later Monday, another suicide attacker blew himself up in a vehicle east of Kobani near the security quarter that houses the main police station and other local government offices. And the Observatory later reported a third suicide attack northeast of Kobani, adding that Islamic State fighters were able to capture a cultural center. Coalition warplanes later bombarded the area, the Observatory said.
• The latest edition of an English-language magazine published by Islamic State seeks to justify forcing ethnic Yazidi women into sexual slavery — a practice it says is encouraged under Islamic law. It represents the most blatant admission to date by Islamic State that its fighters, who have seized large swaths of Iraq and Syria, have enslaved and sexually abused captured women.
Use of Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey was high on the U.S. wish list when President Barack Obama sent a special envoy for the crisis to Ankara last week.
For a few days, there appeared to be a deal. Reporters accompanying Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on a trip to South America over the weekend quoted senior officials as saying that Turkey had agreed to U.S. use of the base.
National security adviser Susan Rice strengthened the impression Sunday. “They have said that their facilities inside of Turkey can be used by coalition forces, American and otherwise, to engage in activities inside of Iraq and Syria,” she said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
But Turkey’s foreign minister shot that down Monday. “Turkey has made no decision on whether to open its Incirlik Air Base to the U.S.-led coalition in the fight,” Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters in New York.
A Turkish spokesman said the U.S. request to use Incirlik was still under discussion, as was the Turkish demand for steps against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
At the heart of the discord is a substantive dispute. Turkey views the U.S.-led bombing campaign against Islamic State targets as a tactical step that lacks a long-term strategy, while the Obama administration has refused to consider Turkey’s demands for steps to oust Assad.
Hagel said Saturday that creating a safe zone inside Syria for Syrians fleeing government bombing, a Turkish demand, is not “actively being considered.” And Rice said Sunday the U.S. does not see it as “essential.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed his demands Monday, saying the main goal of the U.S.-led operations should be Assad’s removal. Also, “A no-fly zone and a safe zone should be set up, so we can be able to place the Syrians inside our country in these safe havens,” he told a university audience. Turkey now hosts 1.5 million Syrian refugees.
Beyond the dispute over principles, an element of pique appears to be at play, with each side delivering calculated snubs to the other. Obama failed to send a senior aide to Erdogan’s inauguration as president in August and declined to meet him for talks during the U.N. General Assembly in September, sending Vice President Joe Biden instead.
After Biden publicly blamed Turkey and other U.S. allies for the rise of the Islamic State and then disclosed what he said was the content of their private conversation, Erdogan threatened to break all contacts with him. Meanwhile, administration aides, speaking anonymously, were quoted by major U.S. news outlets as disparaging Turkey’s contribution to the war on Islamic extremists.
The Turks have reacted likewise. Obama last week dispatched John Allen, his new special envoy for the Islamic State crisis, to Ankara at the tail end of a Middle East tour, but Erdogan did not receive the retired Marine general, a conspicuous omission.
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