Turkish warplanes attacked Islamic State targets in Syria for the first time yesterday, with President Tayyip Erdogan promising more decisive action against both the jihadists and Kurdish militants at home.

The air strikes, which followed a phone conversation between Erdogan and US President Barack Obama on Wednesday, were accompanied by police raids across Turkey to detain hundreds of suspected militants, including from Kurdish groups.

Ankara also said it had approved the use of its air bases by US and coalition aircraft to mount strikes against Islamic State, marking a major change in policy that has long been a sore point for Washington. Turkey has long been a reluctant partner in the US-led coalition against Islamic State, emphasising instead the need to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and saying Syrian Kurdish forces also pose a grave security threat.

But yesterday’s attacks, which officials said were launched from Turkish air space, signalled that Ankara would crack down against Islamic State across the Syrian border.

“In our phone call with Obama, we reiterated our determination in the struggle against the separatist organisation and the Islamic State,” Erdogan told reporters. “We took the first step last night.”

Turkey has faced increasing insecurity along its 900-km frontier with Syria. A cross-border firefight on Thursday between the army and Islamic State, which has seized large areas of Syria and Iraq, left five militants and one soldier dead. Turkey has also suffered a wave of violence in its largely Kurdish southeast after a suspected Islamic State suicide bombing killed 32 people in the town of Suruc on the Syrian border this week.

Three F-16 fighter jets took off from a base in Diyarbakir, southeastern Turkey, early yesterday and hit two Islamic State bases and one “assembly point” before returning, the prime minister’s office said. Meanwhile, US defence officials said yesterday that Turkey had agreed to allow manned US planes to stage air strikes against Islamic State militants from an air base at Incirlik, close to the Syrian border. US drones are already launched from the base.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry went further yesterday, saying it had approved coalition strikes to be launched from its air bases. That would include air fields such as the one in Diyarbakir, southeast Turkey, from where it dispatched the F-16 fighters for the attack in Syria. The ability to fly bombing raids out of Incirlik against targets in Syria could be a big advantage. Such flights have so far had to fly mainly from the Gulf.

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