Turkey has insisted that its troops will not initiate a ground offensive against IS forces on their own, the country’s foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu has said today, adding that it is not ‘realistic’ for the rest of the world to expect that.
This piece of news comes even after IS militants have seized key positions very close to the Turkish border.
Speaking alongside NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the foreign minister also said that ‘airstrikes alone will not shift the balance of power decisively or ‘clean the region of all IS forces and other terrorists.’
A resolution was last week passed in the Turkish parliament authorizing the use of military assets against the IS threat, so Cavusoglu’s remarks are bound to cause of rift among citizens who fully support the parliament’s decision.
IS forces have now wrestled control of more than one third of the border town of Kobani out of the hands of Kurdish fighters. Kobani is a mere few miles from the Syrian border with Turkey, so it is a hugely valuable strategic target for the extremist organization.
Airstrikes by the US-led coalition have so far been largely ineffective in slowing down the advance of IS forces in Kobani and elsewhere.