Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu on Friday rejected an appeal to intervene to save the Syrian border town of Kobani as it appeared close to falling into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Davutoglu rejected as “funny” a motion by opposition leaders in parliament that would authorize Turkish troops to intervene to save Kobani, where Kurdish fighters have been holding off the Islamic State for three weeks, aided by U.S. airstrikes.
U.S. officials and most international observers expect the town to fall to the Islamist extremist group unless ground forces come to its rescue. Though that would give the extremists an important psychological and strategic boost, officials acknowledge there’s little they can do to stop it without Turkey’s help.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on its Facebook page that Islamic State fighters had captured the headquarters of the town’s Kurdish defenders and now controlled more than 40 percent of its area.
The group said Islamic State fighters have been using motorcycles to bring ammunition and reinforcements into the town without drawing air attacks.
Davutoglu’s comments came after meetings Thursday with visiting U.S. envoy to the coalition, retired Gen. John Allen and Brett McGurk, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, the latest U.S. officials trying to convince Ankara to join.
“General Allen and Deputy Special Envoy McGurk also emphasized that urgent steps are immediately required to degrade [the Islamic State’s] military capabilities and ongoing ability to threaten the region. They further stressed that strengthening the moderate Syrian opposition, which is engaged in fighting both [the Islamic State] and the Assad regime, is crucial to any realistic and lasting political settlement of the Syrian crisis,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
She said a joint military planning team would visit Ankara next week to discuss military cooperation against the Islamic State with Turkish officials as part of a deeper bilateral communications process.
In Washington, Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina backed Turkey’s condition for joining the coalition: the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Ankara also wants the coalition to enforce a safe zone in northern Syria to ease the crush of some 1.5 million refugees inside Turkey.
“The growing criticism of Turkey for not acting to save Kobani does not reflect the reality on the ground that both [Islamic State] and Bashar al-Assad must be defeated,” the two Republicans said late Thursday in a statement.
This article, originally posted at 8:16 a.m., has been updated.
