BRUSSELS: Nato vowed strong support for Turkey’s fight against `terrorism’ at an emergency meeting on Tuesday called to discuss Ankara’s strikes against self-styled Islamic State fighters and Kurdish rebels.

The rare talks came as an uncompromising President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Ankara could not continue its peace process with the Kurds amid fresh attacks on Turkish targets.

Turkey’s decision to lump IS together with Kurdish forces who bitterly oppose the militant group has surprised some Western allies, but the message on Tuesday was united behind the alliance’s only Muslim member.

“All allies expressed their strong support for Turkey and we all stand together in solidarity with Turkey. We strongly condemn the terrorist attacks,” Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg said after the meeting of the alliance’s ambassadors in Brussels.

Mr Stoltenberg said Turkey had not requested any military help – it has the second largest armed forces in Nato after the United States – and he welcomed its increased effort against the IS group.

Turkey requested the meeting of all 28 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) nations after a devastating suicide bombing blamed on IS militants in the largely Kurdish border town of Suruc last week in which 32 people were killed.

Once-reluctant Ankara has since launched attacks against IS targets in Syria and Kurd positions in northern Iraq, despite the fact that Kurdish forces have had some of the biggest military successes against the militants.

Turkey has also agreed with the United States to create an “IS-free zone” in northern Syria and dropped its previous refusal to let US aircraft use its Incirlik airbase to launch attacks on the militants.

President Erdogan insisted Ankara would press its attacks to the full and said he considered peace talks with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) dead in the water.

“It is not possible to carry on the (peace) process with those who target our national unity and brotherhood,” he told reporters before leaving on a visit to China, referring to the PKK. “Any step back is out of the question. This is a process and this process will continue with the same determination.”

Mr Erdogan added that a safe zone would help the return of 1.7 million Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Ankara, which along with its western allies officially considers the PKK a terrorist organisation, launched peace negotiations with the group’s jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan in late 2012 but the two sides have yet to reach an accord.

The sudden change of course in recent days has raised questions in western capitals over whether Ankara, fearful of seeing a Kurd state emerge on its southern border, is more interested in limiting Kurdish capabilities than in tackling IS in Iraq and Syria.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2015

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