Turkish Troops Head to Syria Border as Options Weighed

By Onur Ant and Selcan Hacaoglu

Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Former New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly talks about Islamic State and risks to U.S. national security. He speaks with Betty Liu on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop." (Source: Bloomberg)

Turkey sent busloads of troops to its border with Syria and pondered military options as an Islamic State onslaught against Syrian Kurds drew Turkey deeper into its neighbor’s fighting.
Military chief General Necdet Ozel is expected to brief the cabinet today on possible military steps to protect the border and create a secure zone within Syria for refugees fleeing the violence, A Haber television said, without citing anyone. The government, meanwhile, is drafting legislation that would extend its mandate to deploy troops abroad for military operations, Hurriyet newspaper reported today, without saying where it got the information.
The border area heated up
two weeks ago after Islamic State opened an assault in northern Syria on the mostly Kurdish border town of Kobani, also known as Ayn al-Arab, sparking an exodus of tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds into Turkey. A large explosion shook Kobani today, and Turkish ambulances began ferrying injured people from the Mursitpinar border crossing to a state hospital nearby, TRT reported.
Yesterday, errant shells fired by Islamic State militants landed inside Turkey, injuring five people, Turkish Kurdish officials said. The Turkish military immediately reinforced the border with tanks, and CNN-Turk television said hundreds more soldiers were dispatched to reinforce the frontier.

Photographer: Ibrahim Erikan/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

A woman stands in front of her house which is destroyed by a mortar shell, in Alanyurt... Read More

Lira Slumped

The lira was little changed at 2.2797 per dollar at 12:27 p.m. after slumping to an eight-month low yesterday. Yields on two-year debt rose nine basis points to 10 percent, the highest since April 14, as the risk that Turkey will be drawn into the Syrian conflict compounded concerns about its economy.
Stirring frictions further was Islamic State’s dispatch of more forces to a tiny Turkish enclave in Syria where 36 Turkish soldiers guard an Ottoman memorial, according to the Yeni Safak newspaper. Turkey has vowed to defend the shrine to Suleyman Shah, a relation of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, which lies in the area where Islamic State is battling Syrian Kurds and has been Turkish territory since a 1921 treaty.
Nihat Ali Ozcan, an analyst at the Economic Policy Research Foundation in Ankara, said that wasn’t an empty threat.
“Any attack on Turkish soldiers at Suleyman Shah would trigger a military operation by Turkey,” Ozcan said by phone. “Turkey would not abandon that memorial site and its territory there because it has symbolic and historical importance for the Turkish people.”

Ready to Join

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which follows the Syrian civil war using witness reports, said there were no indications the Turkish soldiers were in danger.
Sunni Islamic State fighters have captured areas of northern Iraq and Syria, deepening the violence that has gripped Syria, where rebels are fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian Kurds are the latest group to be targeted by the militants, who have also driven Iraqi Christians and Yezidi communities from their homes in their campaign to establish a Muslim caliphate in Syria and Iraq. The rampage has been especially notorious for beheadings and crucifixions.
U.S.-led forces striking Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria have carried out air attacks on territory the militants control near the conflict zone with the Kurds. Turkey has signaled it’s ready to join the coalition assembled by the U.S. to fight Islamic State, reversing an earlier reluctance to get involved in the conflict. Turkey “can’t stay out” of the campaign, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sept. 28.

Kurds Suspicious

Erdogan has said that Turkey, a NATO member, wants to see the creation of a safe zone inside Syria, without giving details. Turkey may not be able to cope with further inflows of refugees from Syria, and needs to locate them in “safe areas” inside Syria, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said yesterday.
Erdogan said that the U.S.-led campaign must focus on removing Assad by strengthening rebel groups, as well as defeating Islamic State.
Kurds in Turkey have voiced suspicions that Erdogan wants to create a militarized buffer zone along part of the Turkey-Syria border in order to smother the autonomous Kurdish region in Syria. That has threatened to disrupt Erdogan’s peace overtures toward Turkey’s own Kurds, aimed at ending a three-decade guerrilla war.
“We are definitely against any kind of so-called secure zone,” Mustafa Denktas, a member of the mayorship council in the border town of Suruc, said by phone. “It would only serve Turkey’s cause to destroy the autonomous Kurdish region in Syria, and nothing else.”