CRS Update 7/27 Turkey Requests Emergency NATO Meeting

TOP OF THE AGENDA Turkey Requests Emergency NATO Meeting NATO is set to hold an emergency security meeting (Al Jazeera) in Brussels on Tuesday at Turkey's request after Ankara said it would fight militants of the self-proclaimed Islamic State along its Syrian border and Kurdish PKK fighters in Iraq. Turkish forces have intensified air strikes (Reuters) against both groups since Friday. Turkey and the United States are considering a plan to create (WaPo) a de facto "safe-zone" along the Turkey-Syria border. Meanwhile Syrian President Bashar al-Assad acknowledged (BBC) Sunday that the Syrian army had relinquished territory to rebels, but vowed his army would "achieve victory."

ANALYSIS "United States officials said Turks and Americans were working toward an agreement on the details of an operation to clear Islamic State militants from a heavily contested area roughly between the eastern outskirts of the city of Aleppo and the Euphrates River. That is an ambitious military goal, because it appears to include areas of great strategic and symbolic importance to the Islamic State, and it could encompass areas that Syrian helicopters regularly bomb," write Anne Barnard, Michael R. Gordon, and Eric Schmitt in the New York Times. "Turkey's offensive against ISIS doesn't mean that the country no longer wishes to remove Assad from power. But the new strategy means that, for all intents and purposes, Erdogan and Assad are now fighting on the same side. This is a positive development for the once-isolated dictator, who is enjoying a rather good month: The U.S.-Iran deal to limit Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief is a boon for Assad, whose regime is a major beneficiary of Tehran's largesse," writes Matt Schiavenza in the Atlantic. "The prime target in the present circumstances is not Assad and his followers, but IS and the PKK. Assad may yet fall as a result of Turkey’s latest intervention but only if Turkey can successfully clear the proposed zone of IS fighters as it has said it is trying to do, and limit its confrontation with the PKK," writes David Barchard for the Middle East Eye.