Turkey — One month ago, Abu Mohammed al-Halabi painted a dismal picture of his fighters’ struggles against the Islamic State along a crucial geographical corridor north of the Syrian city of Aleppo. The jihadis had killed three of his men in a nighttime ambush in mid-June while using night-vision goggles more advanced than anything his group possessed. His brigade had been fighting for 10 days straight without any injection of money or equipment. If this continued for another week, the beleaguered rebel commander told Foreign Policy, “anything could happen” — even a complete collapse of rebel lines.

“There has been one airstrike [by the anti-Islamic State coalition], and it’s so shameful” that there hasn’t been any more support, he said in June. “Our friends give us shameful amounts of aid.”

But now, Abu Mohammed, a leader of Thuwar al-Sham — an alliance of rebel brigades active in Aleppo city and the surrounding countryside that claims to include roughly 3,500 fighters in its ranks — is singing a different tune. Anagreement last week between Ankara and Washington to fight the Islamic State has left him optimistic that new military equipment and even game-changing airstrikes could soon be on their way.

“What is going on is definitely beneficial to the revolution,” he told FP on July 30 while sitting in his office in this southern Turkish city. “There is a kind of meeting of interests between the Turks, the revolutionaries, and now the United States.”

On July 27, Turkish officials and leaders of rebel brigades in Aleppo met to discuss a new effort to eliminate the Islamic State from the last stretch of land it controls along the Turkish border. At the meeting, Ankara pressed the rebels to take new steps to organize their ranks in preparation for the upcoming assault and promised to take previously unprecedented steps, including providing air support, to sustain the offensive. On July 28, a similar meeting was held between rebel groups and members of the Military Operations Center, known as the MOM, which includes many of the foreign powers that are supporting the armed opposition, including the United States. (The meetings were confirmed by three rebel commanders and officials with knowledge of what was discussed.)

Abu Mohammed said the Turks were pushing the rebel brigades to establish a joint military operations room to fight the Islamic State along the roughly 60-mile stretch of land between the Syrian cities of Jarabulus and Azaz. The operations room would allow the different brigades to coordinate their positions along the front lines, share intelligence, and provide a conduit to their regional allies to request airstrikes that would enable their assaults on jihadi positions.

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