Turkey will soon start combating militants of the Takfiri group, ISIL, inside northern Syria, its foreign minister vowed Wednesday as he met US Secretary of State John Kerry in Malaysia.

Turkey will soon start combating militants of the Takfiri group, ISIL (so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Levant), inside northern Syria, its foreign minister vowed Wednesday as he met US Secretary of State John Kerry in Malaysia.

"Now we are training and equipping the moderate (Syrian) opposition together with the United States, and we will also start our fight against Daesh very effectively soon," Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told reporters at the start of the meeting with Kerry, using the Arab acronym for the Takfiri group.

"Then the ground will be safer for the moderate opposition that are fighting Daesh on the ground," he added.

The two envoys met at a hotel in Kuala Lumpur on the sidelines of a regional security gathering hosted by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Turkey has been reluctant to step up fight against ISIL. Media reports repeatedly said that Ankara has been aiding ISIL terrorists against the Kurdish fighters and against the Syrian government.

However, deadly attacks blamed on ISIL recently rocked Turkey, prompting Ankara to allegedly step the fight against the Takfri group.

Turkey has since carried out a series of air strikes, claiming they were targeting militants from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in northern Iraq as well as ISIL militants.

But observers say PKK fighters been on the receiving end of far more airstrikes that ISIL.

Last month Ankara also said it would allow US warplanes to launch attacks against ISIL from Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey.

Turkey shares a 500-mile (800-kilometer) border with Syria, and a section of its southern frontier abuts directly with territory controlled by the ISIL group.