Ankara/beirut: Turkey yesterday deployed tanks and armoured vehicles to reinforce its border with Syria amid escalating Islamic State (IS) violence, as parliament is set to consider whether to authorise military action against IS jihadists.
IS fighters closed in yesterday to within only a few kilometres of a key Kurdish town on Syria’s border with Turkey, despite new air strikes by the US-led coalition.
It was the closest the militants had come to the town since they began advancing toward it nearly two weeks ago, sending tens of thousands of refugees across the border, said the Britain-based monitoring group.
As they advanced, the IS fired at least 15 rockets at the town centre, killing at least one person, the Observatory said, adding other rockets hit the border zone.
The Turkish army moved tanks and armoured vehicles to the border town of Mursitpinar which lies across from the key Kurdish town of Ain Al Arab after some stray bullets hit Turkish villages, sparking retaliation from Turkey’s military under its “rules of engagement.”
The government said it would shortly submit motions to parliament authorising the armed forces to take action in Iraq and Syria, so Ankara can join the US-led coalition against the IS fighters.
“The motions have not yet been sent to parliament. They may come tomorrow,” parliamentary speaker Cemil Cicek was quoted as saying by NTV television.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has said the motions will be debated on Thursday.
Turkey had refused to join a broad anti-IS coalition led by the United States while dozens of its citizens including diplomats and children were being held by IS militants having been abducted from the Turkish consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
After securing their freedom in a top-secret operation which reportedly resulted in the release of 50 IS fighters, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the country’s position had changed, signalling a more robust stance towards the IS group.
“We will hold discussions with our relevant institutions this week. We will definitely be where we need to be,” Erdogan said on Sunday. The government hopes parliament will approve the military action before the Eid holiday which begins on Saturday.
Erdogan said the IS — blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Ankara since October 2013 — has nothing to do with Islam, which he said “does not legitimise such savagery or violence.”
“Attributing terrorist actions in the Middle East to Islam means nothing other than distorting the truth,” he said in a speech in Istanbul. “Our religion is a religion of peace.”
In a rare move, Turkey’s top general, Necdet Ozel, will speak to the cabinet today followed by a security summit chaired by Erdogan.
Turkey has so far accepted over 160,000 Syrian refugees who fled the IS assault near the town of Ain Al Arab, and has called for creating a safe buffer zone to help civilians inside Syria.
Turkey has already taken in more than 1.5 million refugees who fled the regime of President Bashar Al Assad.
US warplanes attacked IS targets in Syria overnight, in raids that a group monitoring the war said killed civilians as well as jihadist fighters. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes hit mills and grain storage areas in the northern Syrian town of Manbij, in an area controlled by Islamic State, killing at least two civilian workers.
Strikes on a building on a road leading out of the town also killed a number of Islamic State fighters, said Rami Abdulrahman, who runs the Observatory which gathers information from sources in Syria.Agencies
