The British defence secretary has called on Turkey to join the international fight against Islamic State.

In a range of broadcast interviews, Michael Fallon appealed for more allies from the Middle East to come forward, arguing the US and UK could not be the “saviours” of Iraq and Syria alone.

He also said British MPs would still not agree to bombing Isis in Syria as well as Iraq, despite warnings that the extremists could only be defeated by action in both countries.

Fallon said the UK would continue to review the situation, but that for the time being the government judged it would not get a majority, suggesting the Labour leadership and Tory backbenchers would not be supportive.

As Isis attacked the Syrian border town of Kobani, Fallon said the UK and other allies would put pressure on neighbouring Turkey to get involved.

US and Nato officials are meeting in Ankara to try to persuade the country to offer military assistance, but it has refused to send in troops without western backup on the ground.

“We’d certainly like to see Turkey more involved, but in the end that’s obviously a decision for their government,” Fallon said.

The defence secretary also said the UK was considering support for a no-fly zone to create a buffer on the Turkish border with Syria, and joining the US to create training camps for troops prepared to fight Isis in the region.

He told Sky News: “We are looking … at training of the moderate Syrians that we can identify, but outside Syria. Providing training in camps elsewhere in the Middle East, where we can train those in community self-defence in being able to resist Isil [Isis], but doing that outside Syria and then putting them back into the fight in Syria.

“There’s the Free Syrian Army, there are moderate elements in that, and there are other places in the Middle East where they could be trained, in Jordan for example, in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. That’s something we’re looking at very urgently now.”

He said the UK needed to find more allies in the region but could not name any of the groups he proposed to train for warfare.

“The collapse of the state of Iraq and if Syria gets worse, that is going to affect us all,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We’ve seen terrorist strikes across western Europe, there are returning fighters to countries as far apart as Norway and Australia. So this involves the whole international community and that includes Britain.

“We’ve already seen acts of terrorism on our streets and we have a large number of people who have gone across there to fight who may return to commit acts of terrorism at home.

“So we are all involved in this, but I wholly accept that it’s got to be done by as strong a regional coalition as possible.”

Fallon’s comments come after the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, acknowledged air strikes alone were unlikely to save Kobani from Isis. Describing the current military involvement of the UK as a holding position, he said the government had never envisaged that air strikes would be enough.