Posted on 10/01/2011 2:29:30 PM PDT by La Enchiladita
Turkey's leaders have called Israel the "West's spoiled child," and the "bully" of the eastern Mediterranean. When a Tel Aviv soccer team showed up in Istanbul recently for a match, the welcome was less than warm.
In September, Turkey kicked out the Israeli ambassador, suspended military and trade deals and threatened legal and naval action to challenge Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.
As roars of approval went up around the Arab world, few noticed another announcement quietly slipped in by Ankara: Turkey had signed off on a plan to host an American X-band radar system as part of a NATO missile defense system that Washington hails as protection against an Iranian ballistic missile threat.
Turkey was careful not to identify Iran as the reason for the system, but the radar deal stung in Tehran. The state-run Iranian media said Turkey was only helping "the West continue its bullying policies in the region."
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Is Turkey being rewarded for its aggressive stance vs. Israel? Also, apparently, we are helping Turkey to fight the Kurds!!
Not long after agreeing to host the radar system in central Anatolia, Ankara announced that it expects to base a fleet of U.S. predator drones on Turkish soil when U.S. forces withdraw from neighboring Iraq. Unmanned aircraft are a key part of Turkey's fight against PKK separatists operating out of Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
Who is paying for this system that has nothing to do with actually defending the USA? It is questionable if the Iraq War was about the USA too. We should either start charging the benefactors of our defense and technology, or requiring that they buy it from our companies for their own countries, and I include Israel. No more giveaways.
Allies or not they can all pay their own way, and frankly as a USA taxpayer I vote against handing out our dwindling treasury to any other countries for any reason. Most have it better than the USA.
Well, yea. The PKK is supported by syria and iran. This love of kurds stuff on FR is bizarre.....
It's complicated. The Kurds in Iraq are our friends. They're not all PKK. Also, Iran fights them as well.
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