There, it is official; Turkey has no truck with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. Turkey has never supported them, never given them haven, and there are none within Turkey who support the work of ISIS in Syria and Iraq. And nor has Turkey ever been an effective welcome staging area for new recruits to assemble before joining Islamic State, enabling them to cross the border into Syria with ease and good wishes for success.

The latest accusations that Islamic State jihadists have launched an attack on the border town of Kobane from Turkish territory are likewise nothing but yet another slanderous attack on the honour of Turkey, confirmed by an official statement from the office of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, busily receiving Pope Francis, but not too busy to deny any complicity.

Of course, Turkey's key interest in the conflict is the defeat of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ISIS is similarly invested in that very same interest. The coincidence, however, does not make them conspiratorial bedfellows.

And nor has Turkey's official refusal to deploy its considerable military strength in assisting the Syrian Kurdish YPG in their defence of Kobane against the Islamic State jihadists who have held it under siege for months. "It is known that the terrorist group ISIS has been attacking too many places simultaneously in Kobane and also to Mursitpinar border gate since this morning", the statement obligingly offered.

"One of these attacks was made in the Syrian side of the border by a bomb-laden vehicle. The allegation that the vehicle in the mentioned attack reached the border gate through Turkish land is definitely a lie." Turkish officials strenuously denying that the vehicle groaning under its load of bombs passed the border from Turkey. This, in response to claims by activists and Kurds identifying the attack by ISIS as having emanated from Turkish territories.

 

Nawaf Khalil, a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Union Party of Syria held otherwise, explaining that ISIS "used to attack the town from three sides ... today, they are attacking from four sides." A suicide bomb in an armored vehicle on the border crossing between Kobane and Turkey began the assault, according to a spokesman for the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, operating out of Britain.

Turkey remains embittered that the United States  -- while pressing the Turkish government to become involved with the U.S.-led strikes against ISIS in Syria, and at the very least permit the Incerlik air base just north of the Syrian border, in close distance to ISIL targets both in Syria and Iraq be opened for use by the U.S. and its allies -- has not agreed to target the Syrian regime for its crimes against its own people.