U.S., Turkey try to mend fences and confront ISIS

ISTANBUL, Turkey After an extended period of public estrangement and sniping, the United States and Turkey have made up and say they are heading toward close cooperation on defeating the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and eventually seeing the end of the Syrian government of President Bashar Assad.

Vice President Joe Biden, who met for four hours here Saturday with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, called the bilateral relationship "as strong as it has ever been." Erdogan described Biden's three-day visit as "very meaningful."

The visit did not result in any firm new agreements over such sensitive issues as Turkey's long-standing call that protected buffer zones be created inside Syria along the Turkish border, or U.S. requests to use Turkey's Incirlik Air Base to fly bombing missions against ISIS. But officials from both governments said their cooperation was growing.

Senior U.S. and Turkish officials said their rapprochement has intensified since summer with a series of high-level meetings, including a near-constant flow of visits to Turkey by senior U.S. diplomatic and military officials in the weeks before Biden's trip.

Turkey, which is hosting about 1.6million Syrian refugees, has expressed concern that President Barack Obama's decision to launch airstrikes against ISIS militants controlling much of northern and eastern Syria will push the insurgents into Turkish territory. Erdogan and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu also have charged that, with the U.S. bombing campaign against the militants, Obama has lost interest in Turkey's primary goal of helping moderate Syrian opposition rebels to oust Assad.

While the Syrian war has raged for more than three years, Turkey has called for U.S. airstrikes against Syrian government forces. The government's anxiety has grown as the rebels have been driven out of most of their remaining strongholds in northwestern Syria by Assad's military and other militant groups, while the rest of the world has been transfixed by the advance of ISIS.

The United States opposes a buffer zone, and especially the use of U.S. air power to defend one. But the Obama administration has expressed some interest in using rebel forces being trained in a covert CIA program to establish havens along the border with help from Washington and Turkey. The administration recently decided to expand that program, even as Congress has authorized the U.S. military to begin its own training program for rebels to take over territory farther east that is being held by ISIS.

A U.S.-Turkish agreement last month to facilitate the transport and entry of Iraqi Kurdish fighters into the Syrian town of Kobani to battle ISIS fighters also contributed to the new rapprochement between the two governments that Biden's trip was designed in part to solidify.

U.S., Turkey try to mend fences and confront ISIS 11/22/14 [Last modified: Sunday, November 23, 2014 12:06am]

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U.S., Turkey try to mend fences and confront ISIS