US-led forces given permission to use Incirlik facility for first time after Turkish soldier is killed in apparent cross-border clash with terror group

Turkey has agreed to let the US-led coalition against Isis use the country’s Incirlik air base after one Turkish soldier was killed and two were injured in what appeared to be cross-border clashes with the terror group.

The country had previously refused to let the US-led coalition use the military facility but the attack on Turkish personnel – with shots fired across the border from Syria into the southern province of Kilis – have appeared to prompt a change of heart.

Local media said Turkey also scrambled its own F-16 fighter jets from their base in Diyarbakir to the Syrian border after the attack which appeared to signal the first armed confrontation between the country’s forces and Isis.

Turkey’s military said in a statement that a border unit came under fire at 1.30pm by five Isis militants using a rocket launcher and Kalashnikov rifles. The armed forces said the unit seized the weapons and fired on the attackers, killing one and destroying three Isis vehicles.

“The Daesh [Isis] terrorist who opened fire on our staff was killed and his ammunition was seized. […] Three vehicles belonging to the Daesh terrorists have been severely damaged in a fire attack,” the statement read.

The state-run Anadolu news agency said a soldier was killed in Kilis.

“Unfortunately, one of our non-commissioned officers has been martyred and two sergeants injured,” said Suleyman Tapsiz, the governor of Kilis.

'Isis suicide bomber' strikes Turkish border town as Syrian war spills over Read more

By the late afternoon Turkish media said the clashes had ended and the military retreated. The clashes occurred close to the village of Elbeyli, a small border town rife with smugglers to which the Turkish military has sent reinforcements in recent weeks.

The clashes are the latest sign of violent spillover from the Syrian civil war, now in its fifth year, into Turkey. Earlier this week, a suicide bomber targeting a gathering of Kurdish and Turkish activists in the southern city of Suruc killed 32 people in an attack that Turkish officials blamed on Isis.

Turkey has long been a waypoint for foreign fighters entering Syria to join Isis, and the country backs a number of rebel groups fighting against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

On Wednesday the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, discussed efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters into Syria in a telephone call with the US president, Barack Obama.

Turkish media reports said Ankara had agreed to allow the American-led coalition against Isis access to use the Incirlik air base, a softening of the country’s position after it adamantly refused access to the military facility in the past. Air strikes in Syria by the coalition have killed over 3,000 fighters from Isis and the al-Qaida affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, since they began last autumn, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group with wide contacts inside the country.

The Turkish government has long been pushing for the establishment of a buffer zone in Syria alongside the Turkish border, but has so far been unsuccessful in convincing its western allies to enforce a security and no-fly zone in Syria. Thursday’s agreement on the opening of the Incirlik airbase has fuelled speculations that such a move might be again on the table.

Critics of the plan say that such a buffer zone would be largely covering Syrian Kurdish territory, thus undermining growing Kurdish autonomy in Syria, an issue that Ankara is deeply worried about. When Kurdish forces captured the strategic Syrian bordertown of Tal Abyad from Isis militants, pro-government newspapers decried that the Kurdish militias were “more dangerous than Isis”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A man mourns during the funeral ceremony of victims of the suicide bomb attack in Suruc Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

But Thursday’s clashes signalled a further escalation in the fight, one that threatens to draw Turkey, which hosts 1.7 million Syrian refugees and has a 560-mile, porous border with Syria, deeper into the conflict.

Turkey has been more concerned in recent months with Kurdish expansionism in northern Syria, as militias allied with Syrian rebels swept through a large tract of land near the Turkish border, ousting Isis from a number of towns including Tal Abyad.

Turkey began reinforcing its border with Syria in the wake of the Suruc attack, building a “modular wall” along part of its frontier and reinforcing wire fencing and digging extra ditches.

In addition to expanding its troop presence along the border, Turkey has cracked down on Isis networks in the country, arresting hundreds of militants in stings this year.

After the Suruc bombing, Turkish officials said the attacks by Isis were most likely intended as retaliation for their country’s expanded counter-terrorism measures. Michael Weiss, the co-author of Isis: Inside the Army of Terror, said the attacks were intended “for Turkey to revert to its status quo policy of see-no-evil, hear-no-evil when it comes to Isis.” “The Suruc attack seems retaliation for the belated interdiction,” he said, adding that Erdogan’s policies of allowing Isis to build up its presence across the border has permitted the militant group to metastasize and pose a threat to Turkey. “He has a bloody mess on his hands,” he added. Weiss said Erdogan’s policies of turning a blind eye to the Isis expansion and alienating the Kurds now poses a two-front struggle for the Turkish president. Following the Suruc attack, two Turkish policemen were shot dead by militants from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), who said the killings were retaliation for the suicide bombing that claimed Kurdish victims. Serhat Güvenç, a lecturer in international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, said that Thursday’s clashes could spell the beginning of Turkey’s full-blown involvement in the Syrian conflict and the wider Middle East. “The arrow has left the bow,” he said. “Personally I am not sure if such an engagement is necessary, but the events we see are the direct result of Turkey’s Syria policies.”



