US anti-ISIL chief hails Turkey's border efforts

Turkey has made good strides in securing its border with Syria, President Barack Obama's envoy to the anti-Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) coalition said on Feb. 10.      

The U.S. envoy to the coalition against ISIL, Brett McGurk, said Turkish officials "are doing quite a lot" to ensure that ISIL fighters cannot exploit the border, including building berms, increasing border patrols, improving intelligence sharing, and carrying out cross-border artillery strikes.      

"This is having an impact. It is much harder for ISIL fighters to get into Syria now than it was even six months ago and once they're in it is much harder for them to get out," McGurk said in his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Feb. 10.      

"We know from their [ISIL] own publications that they're now telling their fighters not to come to Syria, but to go elsewhere, to Libya for example," he told lawmakers. 

"That's our objective - to stop them getting in. And if they do get in they'll never get out because they will die in Iraq and Syria," he added.     

Due to successive battlefield defeats, notably in the Syrian Kurdish city of Kobane, ISIL has been left with only a 98-kilometer stretch of border, which McGurk described as "its remaining sole outlet to the world."

Meanwhile, on the same day, U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner stressed that the U.S.'s commitment to its alliance with Turkey should not be questioned, amid a dispute between the two countries over the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).      

"Turkey is a NATO ally, a strong partner within the anti-Daesh coalition and we appreciate their support," Toner said on Feb. 10, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL.      

"We...