Syrian No Fly Zone. It took Turkey long enough to get the memo.

July 27, 2015 
Kareem Shaheen and Constanze Letsch

Turkey and the US (click here) have agreed on the outlines of a plan to drive Islamic State out of a strip of land along the Turkey-Syria border, according to reports, in a landmark deal that will draw Turkey further into Syria’s civil war and looks likely to increase the intensity of the US air war against Isis.
 
The agreement to create an “Islamic State-free zone”, as officials are calling it, comes days after a wave of violence linked to the Syrian war prompted Turkey, a Nato member, to launch air strikes for the first time against Isis and to allow a coalition led by the US to use its air bases to bomb militant targets in Syria.
 
It is a diplomatic victory for Turkey, which has long demanded the creation of a safe haven in northern Syria, across the 500-mile (800km) border that links the two countries, as a precondition for joining the battle against Islamic State.

But it remains unclear how the safe haven will be policed, whether it will have to include a de facto no-fly zone patrolled by coalition planes, and what the response will be if troops loyal to the regime of the embattled Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, attack American allies including the Kurdish militias or Syrian opposition fighters battling Isis in northern Syria.... 

The Kurds are not responsible for the attacks on Turkey's border towns.

27 July 2015
 

Kurdish forces in Syria (click here) have accused Turkey of repeatedly attacking their units across the border.

Turkey said it was investigating the claims but insisted the Syrian Kurdish units remained "outside the scope of the current military effort".

Turkey launched air raids on Islamic State fighters in Syria and positions of the Kurdish militant PKK in Iraq following violent attacks in Turkey.

Turkey has also said it has no plans to send ground troops into Syria.

The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), the armed wing of the main Syrian Kurdish party (PYD), said that Turkish tanks had shelled the Kurdish-held village of Zormikhar inside Syria late on Sunday evening.

It added that, an hour later, one of its vehicles had come "under heavy fire from the Turkish military east of Kobane in the village of Til Findire".

In a statement on Monday, the YPG said: "Instead of targeting IS terrorists' occupied positions, Turkish forces attack our defenders' positions. This is not the right attitude....