United States will use air base in Turkey to launch air attacks against Islamic State 12407151

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Defence & Security News - United States / Turkey
 
United States will use air base in Turkey to launch air attacks against Islamic State.
Turkey has agreed to let the United States use Turkish soil to launch air attacks against the Islamic State, signaling a major shift in policy on the part of the once-reluctant American ally, U.S. officials said Thursday, July 23, 2015. The decision to allow U.S. warplanes to use the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey is one element in a broad cooperation plan first broached nine months ago.(Source The Washington Post)
     
Turkey has agreed to let the United States use Turkish soil to launch air attacks against the Islamic State, signaling a major shift in policy on the part of the once-reluctant American ally, U.S. officials said Thursday, July 23, 2015. The decision to allow U.S. warplanes to use the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey is one element in a broad cooperation plan first broached nine months ago.(Source The Washington Post) A U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft assigned to Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 31 makes final engine runs before launching from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) in the Persian Gulf Aug. 9, 2014, as the ship supports operations in Iraq.
     
A White House statement said only that the leaders had discussed “deepening our ongoing cooperation in the fight against ISIL, as well as common efforts to bring security and stability to Iraq and a political settlement to the conflict in Syria.” The Islamic State is also known as ISIS and ISIL.

Use of the Incirlik base, located just 60 miles from the northwest Syrian border, would enable piloted U.S. warplanes and armed drones to move more quickly and efficiently against Islamic State targets in their northern Syrian strongholds, U.S. officials have said. Planes currently fly from Iraq, to Syria’s east, and from Arab states such as Jordan and in the Persian Gulf region that are a part of the anti-Islamic State coalition.

Surveillance aircraft have been permitted to fly from Incirlik, but the Turkish government’s refusal to allow the base to be used for air attacks had triggered one of the deepest rifts in the U.S.-Turkish alliance in more than a decade, reflecting deep-seated policy differences between Ankara and Washington over ways to address the Syrian war. Incirlik has hosted American forces under the umbrella of the NATO alliance for many years, but it remains subject to Turkish sovereignty.

The newspaper quoted an unidentified U.S. official as saying that American strike operations from Incirlik will begin in August.