Turkish Jet Fighters Enter the Fray in Syria

Turkish air force jet fighters flew sorties against Islamic State (ISIS) positions in Syria on Friday, the first time Ankara has joined with the US-led coalition. Recently, Turkey and the United States entered into an agreement whereby the US would be given access to an air base near the Turkish-Syrian border and the Turkish jets would join the fight. According to a statement issued by its foreign ministry, Friday’s targets posed a threat to Turkish security. Ankara has been hesitant to fight ISIS out of fear of retaliation, but as a NATO member actively pursuing its other enemy, the Kurdish PKK – a group Turkey sees as terrorists that is nevertheless one of the main forces combatting ISIS. But despite PKK’s effectiveness, the coalition has, in its first year of launching aerial missions against ISIS, failed to slow down the Islamist groups march through Iraq and Syria. On Saturday, ISIS reportedly captured at least seventy people in the town of Rutbah in western Iraq’s Anbar province who were protesting the execution by ISIS of a resident of the town. It’s not known where those detained are being kept or what the Sunni terrorists have in store for them. Five officers of the Iraqi border guard were killed when their vehicle ran over an explosive device, also in Anbar province, near the Jordanian border.