NATO in 'solidarity' with Turkey

Gathered hastily, diplomats back strikes against ‘terrorism’

A Turkish air force warplane takes off Tuesday from Incirlik Air Base on the outskirts of the city of Adana, Turkey. After months of reluctance, Turkish warplanes last week started striking militant targets in Syria and agreed to allow the U.S. to launch its own strikes from the base.
A Turkish air force warplane takes off Tuesday from Incirlik Air Base on the outskirts of the city of Adana, Turkey. After months of reluctance, Turkish warplanes last week started striking militant targets in Syria and agreed to allow the U.S. to launch its own strikes from the base.

BRUSSELS -- In a rare emergency meeting called by Turkey, NATO ambassadors proclaimed "strong solidarity" with Turkey in its strikes against Islamic State militants waging attacks from across the Syrian border.

The statement of the 28-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization made no specific mention of the Islamic State; rather, it condemned "terrorism in all its forms and manifestations."

The urgent convening of the alliance's decision-making North Atlantic Council was requested by Turkey after a July 20 suicide bombing in the border town of Suruc killed 32 people and attacks on Turkish military units killed two more. Turkish security forces blamed the Suruc attack on the Islamic State and the military deaths on Kurdish extremists.

It was only the fifth time in NATO's 66-year history that a member state called for an emergency session, invoking Article 4 of the alliance's founding treaty to tackle a perceived threat to the state's security or territorial integrity.

The statement issued by NATO after the one-hour session expressed unfettered support for Turkey in its response to the recent acts of terrorism.

"The security of the alliance is indivisible, and we stand in strong solidarity with Turkey," it stated.

However, NATO diplomats speaking privately to reporters in Brussels indicated that Turkey had been quietly admonished for reported attacks on Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq. Turkey was also encouraged to remain engaged in stalled peace talks with Turkey's Kurdistan Workers' Party, the PKK.

"Turkey's allies condemned attacks by both Daesh and the PKK but wanted to see talks between the government and the PKK 'kept alive' because of Turkey's 'investment' in finding a solution to the 30-year conflict between the militants and the Turkish state," Turkey's Anadolu Agency reported, citing NATO sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State.

As the ambassadors were gathering at NATO headquarters, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a news conference in Ankara that it was impossible to advance a peace process with the Kurds as long as attacks on Turkey continue.

The Kurds are an ethnic group that have their own language and live in a region spanning Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran and Armenia. The Kurdistan Workers' Party has fought Turkey for autonomy for Kurds in a conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.

Turkey had been reluctant to join U.S.-led coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq until last week's terrorist attacks. But Turkish forces have been accused of using the campaign against Islamic State militants as a pretext for also striking the Syrian Kurdish militia that now controls much of the Syrian-Turkish border region.

The Syrian Kurdish fighters have been the most successful of the forces battling the Islamic State and have swept the militants out of several strategic strongholds in Syria.

Officials in Ankara are wary of Syrian Kurdish fighters establishing too influential a presence along the border for fear that will reignite an insurgency that has plagued Turkey for three decades.

On Tuesday, the fighting between the Turkish military and Kurds escalated, with Turkish fighter jets pounding the Kurdistan Workers' Party after soldiers were fired on with heavy weaponry in Sirnak province, according to a military statement.

Elsewhere, a Turkish soldier died after he was shot in the head by a Kurdish militant near the border with Iraq, Turkey said. In a second attack in Sirnak province, suspected Kurdistan Workers' Party rebels hurled a bomb at a military vehicle, wounding one soldier, the Anadolu Agency reported.

NATO's statement on the emergency meeting made no mention of the fighting, saying only that "we will continue to follow the developments on the southeastern border of NATO very closely."

Turkey did not use the session to ask for military assistance from the alliance, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters after the meeting.

"What we all know is that Turkey is a staunch ally. Turkey has very capable armed forces -- the second-largest army within the alliance," Stoltenberg said.

The NATO chief said the North Atlantic Council gathering did not discuss a plan disclosed Monday by U.S. and Turkish officials that aims to drive Islamic State militants from a 70-mile-long buffer zone along the Syrian border. That mission is a bilateral one, Stoltenberg said.

Turkey and the U.S. plan to use airstrikes to drive the militants out of the buffer zone and allow "moderate" Syrian opposition forces to take control of the region and secure it for resettlement by some of the 2 million Syrian refugees who fled to Turkey to escape the 4-year-old civil war.

Information for this article was contributed by Carol J. Williams of the Los Angeles Times; and Desmond Butler, John-Thor Dahlburg, Mark D. Carlson, Suzan Fraser and Frank Jordans of The Associated Press.

A Section on 07/29/2015

Upcoming Events