"We've seen the Turkish fire some artillery to very good effect in the Manbij pocket. We're continuing to work with the Turks to tighten up our coordination with them on these artillery strikes that they do in that area, but yes, they are targeted," Operation Inherent Resolve Spokesman Colonel Steve Warren said during a State Department briefing via teleconference from Baghdad on Thursday. He was referring to a 98-kilometer stretch along Turkey's southern border with Syria, which Western powers complain has not been sealed off.
Col. Warren's remarks were a response to a question on an announcement by Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on Thursday that the Turkish military fired on about 500 ISIL targets in Syria and Iraq after a suicide bombing at İstanbul's historic Sultanahmet square on Tuesday that authorities said was carried out by an ISIL militant. Close to 200 ISIL militants, including the group's regional leaders, were killed in the strikes, Davutoğlu said.
Asked whether the Turkish strikes were part of the US-led coalition's military campaign against ISIL, Col. Warren said: "They are, but we still need to work on our coordination."
"We want to ensure that we know exactly where they're going to strike before they strike. And this is always the case in any – in any type of a large outfit with as many moving parts as we have in this coalition, that's going to happen. So we've identified is the Turks filling a need, right? There were some weather problems; we were having difficulty providing the type of air power we wanted to provide, and the Turks filled in with artillery fire. So it was perfect. It happened the way it was supposed to happen," said Warren.
todayszaman.com
15/1/16
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