The United States has rejected the possibility of imposing a no-fly zone over northeastern Syria along the border with Turkey to deny the Syrian military the ability to launch airstrikes there.
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The US was "open to discussing a range of options with the Turks" but that a no-fly zone over Syria was not on the table "at this point," President Barack Obama's spokesman Josh Earnest said on Monday.
Turkey has requested the US to establish a buffer zone along the Turkish-Syrian border.
"A no-fly zone must be declared and this no fly-zone must be secured," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told reporters on September 26 on his return from the 69th annual session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the Associated Press reported.
"We continue to have differences" with Turkey, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said separately, stressing, "We haven't made a decision about a specific course of implementation, we're just continuing to have a discussion with Turkey."
US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and General Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on September 26, that they had “discussed all these possibilities and will continue to talk about what the Turks believe they will require.”
Dempsey added that “a buffer zone might at some point become a possibility.”
Since late September, the US, along with its regional allies, has been conducting airstrikes against the ISIL inside Syria without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.
Many of the countries joining the so-called anti-terror coalition, such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, have been staunch supporters of the ISIL Takfiri elements in the Middle East.
The ISIL terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, control large parts of Syria's northern territory.
Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011.
