Turkey Offers Military Bases to U.S.-Led Coalition.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-12/rice-says-turkey-offering-bases-to-train-syrian-rebels.html

Turkey pledged to open its military bases to coalition troops and help train Syrian rebels as Pentagon leaders prepare to host defense ministers from 20 nations this week to plot strategy against Islamic State forces.

After weeks of hesitation and complaints it wasn’t doing enough to combat Islamic State, Turkey agreed to let the U.S. and allies train moderate Syrian rebels on its soil and make use of its bases, U.S. National Security AdviserSusan Rice said yesterday.

The agreement is a significant expansion of Turkish cooperation in the fight against Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in parts of Syria and Iraq and is gaining territory along the Turkish border.

While Turkey has previously pledged to join the campaign, it hadn’t said what it would be willing to contribute militarily. The NATO member had ruled out sending ground troops into Syria unless the U.S. broadened the campaign to target the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey is now willing to join Saudi Arabia in offering territory to be used to train moderate Syrian rebels who could fight Islamic State on the ground in Syria, Rice said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program.

“That is a new commitment,” Rice said of Turkey’s pledge.

The move to help train Syrian opposition forces bolsters Turkey’s twin objectives of weakening Islamic State fighters while trying to oust Assad.

‘Decisive Battle’

“Had they overrun the Iraqi unit, it was a straight shot to the airport,” Dempsey said in the taped interview for ABC’s “This Week” program. “So, we’re not going to allow that to happen. We need that airport.”

The Iraqi cities of Mosul and Fallujah, which are now controlled by Islamic State forces, have become the site of “crucifixions and beheadings of a nature that the world hasn’t seen in hundreds of years,” Dempsey said.

“Mosul will likely be the decisive battle in the ground campaign at some point in the future” when Iraqi troops are strong enough to go back on the offensive and retake territory, he said. “My instinct at this point is that that will require a different kind of advising and assisting, because of the complexity of the fight.”

A Turkish army tank holds a position on a hilltop, with the Syrian town of Kobani in the background, in the southeastern town of Suruc, Turkey, close to the Turkish-Syrian border, on Oct. 10, 2014.