Carter’s trip aims to strengthen fight against Islamic State

Carter was in Turkey Tuesday, saying he’s seeking new ways the U.S.-led coalition can reinforce its fight against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

“We want them to do more”, Carter said on his first trip to İncirlik as defense secretary.

On the same day, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu spoke over the phone regarding the fight against ISIL and the latest developments in Iraq after tensions increased between Turkey and Iraq following Turkish troops’ deployment to Iraqi soil over a week ago.

Carter said he’ll be requesting his military commanders and other officials to produce new tactics that can be utilized to assault IS, and identify new contributions that coalition partners can make to quicken the destruction of the insurgent group.

“The single most important contribution that [Turkish] geography makes necessary is the control of their own border”, Carter said.

Russia and Turkey also have been at odds over Russian flights at Turkey’s border.

Incirlik air base has become one of the most important centers used by the US-led anti-terrorist coalition to stage its air campaign against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

President Barack Obama on Monday said the U.S. and its allies were hitting IS “harder than ever” and warned the extremists’ leaders: “You are next”.

“Over this trip and in the subsequent weeks and months, I’ll be asking them each to make the strongest, most robust contributions that they can”, said Carter, who is making a weeklong trip to the region.

Around 45 of the 59 aircraft using Incirlik are from the United States and include both manned and unmanned.

The secretary also said he was grateful to Germany, Spain, Qatar, and host nation Turkey for their recently added armed forces to the campaign.

“Together over the past month, we have achieved the highest operational tempo against ISIL since the start of the air campaign in August 2014”, said the source, using a different acronym for IS. After the visit to Iraq, Turkish officials said the two countries had agreed to redeploy Turkish troops from the Bashika camp, setting the stage for Monday’s partial troop withdrawal. Turkey has not disclosed the number of troops that it withdrew, due to security reasons, but about 10 to 12 convoys left the camp and relocated to another base in northern Iraq, according to military sources.

Moscow denied that, and has retaliated by deploying long-range air defense missile systems to its air base in Syria. “Not all of them but some, I can’t say exactly how many”, al Nujaifi told The Associated Press, adding “the Turkish trainers are still in the camp providing training”.