Obama deploying 6 fighter jets to Turkey to fight ISIS
RT | August 9, 2015
The US Mission to NATO has confirmed that Washington is deploying six F-16 Fighting Falcon jets to Turkey. They are heading to the Incirlik airbase in the south of the country to help NATO in their fight against Islamic State.
The US representatives to the alliance made the statement in a message published on their Twitter feed. Aside from the six fighter jets, two other military aircraft will be travelling to Turkey from an undisclosed location in Europe.
The Anadolu Agency reports that the contingent includes a C-5 transport plane plus a KC-135 refueling aircraft.
Around 300 airmen from the 31st Fighter Wing are also being sent to Turkey, to help support Operation Inherent Resolve, according to the US military website Stripes.
The US had previously only used the Incirlik airbase, which is near the southern city of Adana, for unmanned reconnaissance missions.
Sunday’s announcement follows a decision by Ankara to allow the US to use the airbase near the Syrian border, to conduct airstrikes against Islamic State (IS). The proximity of the base means that US planes can reach IS targets in only 30 minutes.
On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Pentagon confirmed an unmanned drone was launched from Incirlik Air Base and that it hit a number of targets near Raqqa, which is IS’s stronghold in Syria. He also said preparations were underway for strikes inside Syria by manned US warplanes, Reuters reported.
“As part of our agreement with the US, we have made progress regarding the opening up of our bases, particularly Incirlik,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu earlier told state broadcaster TRT, as cited by Reuters.
Turkey had been against the US and NATO using airbases in the country to conduct airstrikes against Islamic State.
However, Ankara made a sudden U-turn. In return for Washington’s use of Incirlik, Ankara has asked the US to establish a no-fly zone over Syria and a “security zone” along the Turkish border, according to Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, who outlined the deal in July.
The attack by an Islamic State suicide bomber in July, which killed 32 people and injured more than 100, was the main reason for Ankara’s U-turn. It was the first time that IS had conducted an attack on Turkish soil. The group struck a cultural center in the mainly Kurdish border town of Suruc.
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Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
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