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Turkish military angered by Ankara’s peshmerga move

The Turkish military is said to be riled and to have informed the government of its opposition to seeing Iraqi Kurdish fighters in Turkey.
A man waves a Kurdistan flag as a Turkish military truck escorts a convoy of peshmerga vehicles at Habur border gate, which separates Turkey from Iraq, near the town of Silopi in southeastern Turkey, October 29, 2014. Iraqi peshmerga fighters arrived in southeastern Turkey early on Wednesday ahead of their planned deployment to the Syrian town of Kobani to help fellow Kurds repel an Islamic State advance, a Reuters witness said. REUTERS/Kadir Baris (TURKEY - Tags: POLITICS MILITARY CONFLICT TPX IMAGES OF TH

A group of Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga fighters, numbering around 200, arrived in Turkey this week together with heavy weapons that will be deployed in the northern Syrian town of Kobani to assist local Kurdish fighters as they try to roll back advances by the Islamic State (IS).

The arrival of the peshmerga, however, has prompted questions about the ability of such a limited force to alter the military situation against IS, which also has heavy weapons and a large number of highly motivated fighters. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has indicated that the peshmerga will not engage in direct combat with IS, but will merely provide artillery support and training.

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