You think?
The question of whether Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is really a US ally was put to US defense secretary Mark Esper on Fox television this morning. “No, I think Turkey, the arc of their behavior over the past several years has been terrible,” he said.
Which brings up a problem: The US is storing perhaps 50 air-dropped thermonuclear bombs at its Incirlik Airbase in southern Turkey, less than 100 miles from the Syrian border where this conflict is taking place.
I've been complaining about those bombs being there for a while. We have an Erdogan problem and not an S-400 purchase problem--or even a broader Turkey problem, so I think we should cauterize the wound and hope for better days with Turkey post-Erdogan.
But until those better days, nukes in Turkey aren't doing us any good.
Would Erdogan even let us use them in a conflict with Russia? Would Turkish pilots drop them on a NATO enemy? Not when Erdogan is stiff-arming America while remaining in NATO where it can use membership as a shield against NATO responses to Turkish actions.
Does having nukes in Turkey that Erdogan could order used--as long as he gets American permission--be enough to keep him from pursuing nukes purely under Turkey's control?
Get real. If Erdogan wants to rebuild Ottoman-era influence (without the actual imperial control), having to ask America permission should obviously show that this reason to keep our nukes in Turkey just doesn't work.
Right now the only purpose for those nukes is to allow Erdogan to capture the nukes by seizing control of the Incirlik base where our troops are stationed.
And Erdogan could use our captured troops as hostages until he can figure out how to use them, how to disassemble them and get the nuclear material out for his own use, or sell them to the highest bidders. Or some combination.
Get those nukes out. We have others in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy for actual NATO missions. We can add to those stockpiles with the weapons currently in Turkey or even see if the Greeks might like them on Crete.
Or we could bring them home, or send them to INDOPACOM.
Wherever those American nuclear bombs should be, Turkey under Erdogan isn't that place.
UPDATE: More people are noticing this problem:
Frayed U.S. relations with Turkey over its incursion in Syria raise a sensitive question rarely discussed in public: Should the United States remove the nuclear bombs it has long stored at a Turkish air base?
We should absolutely pull them out.
Or disable them on site if Erdogan hinders removal because he likes having hostages.
The idea that we should have gone to war with Turkey over the Syrian Kurds on the border with Turkey is insane. And this is just one issue that makes that urge lunacy.
