Friends without benefits: the US-Turkish alliance

Yet as the situation in Kobane has descended into running street battles, with Islamic State holding approximately a third of the town, and as coalition airstrikes attempt to protect the remaining population (180,000 have already fled); only a few hundred meters away, and literally within eyesight of the violence, the Turkish military, as the second largest army in NATO, has remained within the Turkish border.

Worse still, Turkey has inexplicably arrested both Kurdish refugees fleeing the violence and Turkish citizens returning from the fighting in order to seek medical treatment. Moreover, until recently, Turkey has barred both Kurdish fighters and supplies from entering Kobane to help with the fighting.

Kobane unequivocally represents a worsening humanitarian emergency, and a strategically important town in the global effort to degrade Islamic State. Turkish willingness to not only let the conflict continue, but to obstruct efforts that might save the town and its population, is not only morally, but also strategically unjustifiable. The only reasonable explanation for this behaviour, is that despite the calming of Kurdish hostilities, Turkey still sees the Kurds as a danger to their country – and a danger on par with Islamic State. This conviction has seemingly made Turkey unwilling to engage Islamic State and to fulfil its international obligations, out of fear that such actions might in some small way help a Kurdish population, though be it a foreign one. In violation of their own publicly stated commitments to the contrary, Turkey is effectively aiding and facilitating Islamic State fighters on its own doorstep, in the hope that these fighters can engage the Kurdish population of Kobane is an exhaustive, and resource-depleting conflict.

Recognising this reality, and being forced to watch helplessly as their own people are killed within eyesight, Turkish-Kurds vented this anger in street protests on the 7^th of October. Where an unfolding genocide on their border could not convince Turkey into military action, these street protests succeeded – the Turkish military finally mobilised. Yet, rather than striking Islamic State they bombed PKK strongholds in North-Eastern Iraq (an action that had been predicted in some quarters due to the openness of the language employed by the Turkish parliament in its declaration of war).

Throughout all of this, the United States has been betrayed as much as anyone. It has, through various diplomatic avenues and mediums (leading all the way up to Secretary of State John Kerry), been pleading with Turkey to behave an as ally in substance, rather just in name. Until now however, no amount of begging has yet managed to convince Turkey to intervene in Kobane. Moreover, currently the US and its allies have been refused access to Turkish airbases to facilitate the international air campaign against Islamic State.

The United States, NATO, and indeed the international community as whole, must begin to realise that they are receiving an ever-decreasing return from their investment in Turkey, and must begin to face the realisation, that Turkey, though masquerading as a constructive international actor, is proving ever-increasingly to be an outlier nation.