US tries to enlist Turkey in battle against IS

By Dustin M Braden - 09 Sep '14 15:04PM

On Monday U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had a meeting with the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, to evaluate Turkey's contribution to the coalition to fight the Islamic State.

Turkey, the Eurasian nation holding a critical geopolitical position, is one of the key countries in the coalition against IS. Due to its strategic location, foreign fighters frequently use Turkey as a transit point to join IS in Syria. The Obama administration expressed their concerns about the flow of prospective militants from mainly Europe to Syria, and they want Turkey to take action on the issue, The New York Times reported.

But the Turkish government has some reservations about declaring their support openly, and joining the coalition simultaneously. These concerns are concentrated around two major issues. They are the fact IS has a number of Turkish hostages, and that the Turkish government is wary of weapons given to other rebels ending up in the hands of a domestic terrorist organization

Back in June, IS militants attacked the Turkish Consulate General in Mosul, kidnapping diplomatic staff, members of the special forces and their dependents. The location of the hostages still has not been disclosed to the public. Declaring Turkish support for the fight against IS may jeopardize the lives of the hostages.

The second reservation of the Turkish government is that the weapons sent by the coalition to fight IS might end up in the hands of P.K.K. militants. P.K.K. is a Kurdish separatist terrorist organization, which Turkey has been battling to subdue for almost three decades.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, on Anatolia news agency, said "We have expressed our concerns. It may not be possible to control where these weapons will go."

After the meeting with Erdogan, Hagel said that he had been informed about Turkey's reservation about the P.K.K. But, he explained, "They didn't indicate to me in any way that they saw the P.K.K. as a more significant threat than IS," the Times reported.