ANKARA, Turkey – Washington and Ankara have reached a preliminary agreement to provide air support for Syrian rebels trained in Turkey under a joint program with the United States, the Turkish foreign minister said.
"There is an agreement in principle on providing air support,” Turkish media reports quoted Mevlut Cavusoglu as saying during a visit to South Korea. “How it is going to be provided is the responsibility of the military,” he said.
The announcement follows two stunning victories last week by Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. The religious zealots captured the Syrian city of Palmyra last Wednesday, three days after they stormed into Ramadi, capital of Iraq’s largest province, Anbar.
The ISIS victories have called into question the effectiveness of months of US-led air strikes against the militants.
The Turkish foreign minister said the air support would be for Syrian opposition forces trained in Turkey under a US-led program. It would cover the 15,000 rebels from the mainstream Syrian opposition who are to return to Syria for the fight against ISIS.
"They have to be supported by air. If you don’t protect them or provide air support, what is the point?” Cavusoglu was quoted as saying by the Daily Sabah newspaper. He added that, while the priority in Syria is to fight ISIS, “the regime must also be stopped."
While Turkey and the US have been boosting cooperation in the war in Syria, their goals are not entirely the same. The United States says the main objective in Syria is to crush ISIS while Turkey – which has been accused of aiding ISIS and allowing its fighters to cross into Syria for ‘jihad’ – says that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go.
The training program is part of a plan by US President Barack Obama’s administration to train “moderate Syrian” forces, and the Pentagon has said that 400 special operations personnel are involved in the instruction.
The program got underway after several delays over who would be trained. Turkey, seen as the main backer of the mainstream Free Syrian Army (FSA), recruited those rebels for the scheme.
The FSA is considered a moderate opposition force, but extremist Islamists are feared to have infiltrated the group. Two years ago, US-supplied weapons to the FSA were found in the hands of ISIS and other radical groups.
