Senior State Dep official: it was “a challenge” to get Ankara to move beyond its antipathy towards the Kurds.

Tears for Hamas and  Gaza, Kobane.........Not so much.

Senior State Department official: it was “a challenge” to get Ankara to move beyond its antipathy towards the Kurds. (TOI).

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States is pushing Turkey to join the fight against Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Syria, amid frustration and wariness in both governments heightened by Ankara’s unease at helping besieged Kurdish communities. 

Retired US general John Allen, and the US pointman on Iraq, Brett McGurk, will Thursday begin two days of talks in Ankara seeking to squeeze commitments from Turkey on what role it will play in the US-led coalition battling hardline Islamic militants, who have seized control of a large swath of its southern neighbors Iraq and Syria.

“There is frustration and anger among the Americans, and yet at the same time, they realize that the Turks are in a difficult position,” said Bayram Balci, an expert with the Carnegie think-tank in Washington.

“They know that the Turks have ‘good reason’ not to intervene,” he added.

Syria-based Kurds are fighting against the Islamic State (IS) group in the besieged town of Kobani.

“There’s growing angst about Turkey dragging its feet to act to prevent a massacre less than a mile from its border,” a senior administration official told the New York Times.

“After all the fulminating about Syria’s humanitarian catastrophe, they’re inventing reasons not to act to avoid another catastrophe.”

US officials, however, have publicly downplayed any notion that they are dismayed by Ankara’s reluctance, saying they are in “active discussions” with the Turks, while refusing to outline exactly what they want their NATO ally to do.

“I think there’s a recognition ISIL poses a direct threat and a neighboring threat to Turkey… clearly we think they can do more,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

An over-riding fear for Turkey is that the standoff around Kobane could lead to the creation of a Kurdish fighting force overlapping the Turkish and Syrian borders.

And a senior State Department official has admitted that it was “a challenge” to get Ankara to move beyond its antipathy towards the Kurds.

But White House spokesman Josh Earnest insisted: “The stake that Turkey has in the outcome here is significant and very direct. It is not in the interest of that nation for this kind of violence and instability to be emerging literally on their doorstep.”Read the full story here.