ANKARA
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Friday that Syrian Kurdish militants have agreed to accept 1,300 Free Syrian Army troops in Kobani.
The troops, which have been fighting against the Syrian government, will join the fight against ISIL with forces from the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, or PYD.
Erdogan said, however, that the Syrian Kurdish fighters, who belong to the PYD, could change their minds in the future.
Erdogan also said peshmerga forces, Kurdish fighters from Iraq, would also be joining the fight to save the Syrian border town.
"The PYD previously approved the passage of some 200 peshmerga forces," he said. "However, we later learned that the number agreed has changed and now it is only 150 peshmerga soldiers."
Erdogan made his remarks during a joint press conference with his Estonian counterpart, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, in the Estonian capital of Talinn.
"We clearly said that our approach is very positive toward the Free Syrian Army's fighting in Syria," Erdogan said. "We always said that they were our first preference in Syria, and that the second preference is the peshmerga."
"Now they seem to have accepted some 1,300 troops from the Free Syrian Army," he said.
The Free Syrian Army confirmed the move, according to a written statement by the group's operating unit in Aleppo.
The troops will be under the command of Colonel Abdul-Jabbar al-Aqidi. Details of the operations were not made public.
In the statement, the group called on international coalition forces and other armed groups in the region for assistance and cooperation in combating ISIL.
U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington that the U.S. would support the inclusion of Free Syrian Army fighters in the defense of Kobani, but said the U.S. would not facilitate the movement.
"I don’t think it’s for the United States to play a role there," she said. "I’m not quite clear on what Turkey’s role would be either, given we’re talking about movement within Syria. But certainly that’s a question you should ask the Turkish authorities."
The battle for control of the strategic town has been raging since mid-September when ISIL entered Kobani. An estimated 1.5 million Syrian refugees, including some 190,000 from Kobani, are being sheltered in camps across Turkey.
In his meeting with the Estonian leader, Erdogan said the two NATO allies found the opportunity to discuss precautions against terrorism, and the security situation in a number of countries including Ukraine, Syria and Iraq.
He reiterated that Turkey never accepted Russia's annexation of Crimea and ongoing political pressure on Crimean Tatars, saying that the discussion on that issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin are ongoing.
"We are for resolving such issues with diplomatic means today," Erdogan said.
Ilves criticized Russia's aggression in Ukraine saying, "Russia attempted similar acts in Estonia in the past."
Estonia and Latvia, two countries on the Russian border and formerly part of Soviet Russia, are concerned that Russia might act towards them as it did in Ukraine in March. After Russia annexed Crimea following a referendum in the peninsula, pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine rebelled to break away from Kiev.
Erdogan also said Turkey's joining a NATO cyber defense center based in Talinn is a positive move.
"When we finally join, I think we will further solidify our cooperation," he said.
On Friday, Erdogan will visit the Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, a NATO research center established in 2008 with the mission of defending against cyber attacks.
Estonia suffered a string of cyber attacks in 2007 that disabled the government websites, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies -- the action led NATO to take stricter precautions against cyber warfare.
During his vist, Erdogan will also meet with Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and Parliamentary Speaker Eiki Nestor, and return to Turkey on Friday night.
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