Erdogan’s Turkey: unwilling ally in struggle against Islamic State

“In the fight against ISIS, the Western world will be able to see whether Turkey will be promoted from an ally to a friend or to be kept, still, as an intelligence target,” I concluded in my Al-Monitor article on Sept. 4, at the start of the NATO summit in Wales. 

In the wake of the summit, how Turkey will act in terms of the coalition that US President Barack Obama promised to form is still unclear. Despite being a NATO ally, Turkey is not counted on as a backbone or a staunch member of such a coalition, given its closeness to the Islamic State (IS) that has been prioritized as a target by the Wales summit and by the US administration.

After the summit, Obama responded on NBC's "Meet the Press" to questions in a comprehensive interview with Chuck Todd on the conclusions of the summit. He was unequivocal on the issue of IS and said:

“Unless we have people we can work with who are Sunni in these Sunni regions, then we're going to continue to have these problems. And […] the strategy both for Iraq and for Syria is that we will hunt down [IS] members and assets wherever they are. … But in terms of controlling territory, we're going to have to develop a moderate Sunni opposition that can control territory and that we can work with. The notion that the United States should be putting boots on the ground, I think would be a profound mistake. And I want to be very clear and very explicit about that.”