Nato holds vital role in the strategy to halt march of IS

At face value the strategy for stopping the jihadists appears oddly disjointed. Two very powerful military forces and Nato allies, the US and Turkey, seem to be responding in very different ways.

This was underlined yesterday in remarks made by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who stressed "it is not realistic to expect Turkey to conduct a ground operation on its own."

It is no secret Turkey's hesitance to commit its military, Nato's second-largest, to save Kobani reflects a fear of emboldening and empowering its own Kurdish population, which has long sought greater autonomy.

But Ankara, too, is also keen to keep pressure on Washington to refocus on ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As Turkey sees it, US-led airstrikes instead appear to be indirectly helping him.

For now, though, it is the situation in Kobani that is grabbing the headlines and IS fighters' new territory.

What seems to be emerging in the US-Turkey response is that long term factors are paramount. This will be little consolation to the courageous resistance being put up by Kobani's Kurdish defenders, whose backs are now well and truly to the wall.

Indeed, if one wanted to take a cynical view of how events are playing out, it could even be said there are signs Kobani is perhaps being forfeited, buying Washington and Ankara time to work out the details of where they go from here with a longer term strategy in confronting IS.

Some of the clues to where this might be leading were lodged in the responses of American officials yesterday. For his part, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he expected Turkey to decide "over the next hours, days" what more it may do to confront IS.

Then other US officials waded in, with one spokesman suggesting Washington was playing a longer game with Ankara about their overall role.

"It's a larger objective with them (Turkey) than Kobani ... a larger discussion," one was quoted as saying.

To help clarify just what that objective might be, Washington has sent two of its military and diplomatic big guns in the shape of envoys retired General John Allen and State Department official Brett McGurk. So just what should we make of all this diplo-speak and manoeuvring?

Perhaps the best guide lies in the presence in Ankara yesterday of new Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg.

Increasingly it is beginning to look as though the Nato card could prove crucial in bringing Washington and Turkey into an agreement over joint action.

What, for example, if Kobani were to fall and IS fighters ensconced themselves in this border region from where they could launch strikes into Turkey?

Such an attack might well result in Nato implementing Article 5 of the Washington Convention, which would effectively activate Nato's joint defence components.

Article 5 is clear in stating an attack against one Nato member shall be considered an attack against all members.

In other words, should IS strike Turkey, Nato may well throw its full weight behind military action. Such a move would doubtless give Turkey the confidence it would need to act and give other Nato members such as America, Britain, France and others the justification for beefed up joint military deployment.

Already, at Ankara's request, Nato appears to have drawn up just such a contingency plan.

"If there is an attack, Nato's joint defence mechanisms will be activated," Turkey's Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz is already on the record as saying.

"From the moment the incidents relating to Syria first started, we asked Nato to prepare for possibilities to make plans. Nato prepared a plan taking various alternatives into account," said Mr Yilmaz.

Last Monday, during a news conference in Warsaw, Mr Stoltenberg pretty much confirmed the Turkish defence minister's assertion.

"The main responsibility for Nato is to protect all allied countries. Turkey is a Nato ally and our main responsibility is to protect the integrity, the borders of Turkey," insisted Mr Stoltenberg.

"Turkey should know Nato will be there if there is any spillover, any attacks on Turkey as a consequence of the violence we see in Syria."

Such an unfolding of events and Nato action would, of course, depend on IS going beyond Kobani and striking into Turkish territory. This begs the question of whether the jihadists, who thus far have shown themselves tactically adept on the battlefield and shrewd - if brutal - political operators, would provide such a casus belli and risk bringing down an all-out Nato response against their forces on the ground?

While this remains a difficult question to answer, there is certainly no shortage of Middle East experts and analysts who believe IS would like nothing better than to lure Western powers into a wider, more protracted conflict.

For the moment, though, we are not quite at that point yet, and the talk is all of buffer zones and no-fly zones along the Turkey-Syrian border.

In Turkey, parliament voted last week to authorise cross-border intervention, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government have so far held back, saying they will join military action only as part of an alliance that also confronts the Assad regime.

Mr Erdogan wants the alliance to enforce a no-fly zone to prevent Mr Assad's air force flying over Syrian territory near the Turkish border and create a safe area for an estimated 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Turkey to return.

France has said it supports the idea of a safe area, and Britain said it was studying it. But it is clear the proposal has not taken hold in Washington, which has been bombing IS targets in Syria without Mr Assad raising objections, and does not want to be dragged into a conflict against Damascus.

"At the moment, the American air force is flying all over Syria with the permission of the Assad government," was how Tim Ripley, a defence expert for Jane's Defence Weekly summed up the situation.

"To try and impose a no-fly zone would potentially involve a major air war against one of the biggest air forces in the Middle East ... which would only be a distraction from the fight against IS," added Mr Ripley.

The fighting in Kobani is intense. No doubt its Kurdish defenders have more pressing concerns to contend with in the ruins of the frontlines. But the latest remarks by the US Secretary of State will give them little succour and may even imply their fate is already sealed.

Mr Kerry said: "Kobani is a tragedy because it represents the evil of IS, but it is not the definition either of the strategy or the full measure of what is happening with response to IS."