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To: Sioux-san

OK, I’ll tell you again. They have been a loyal and dependable ally since the Korean war. They have supplied their airfield(I’ve served there)at Adana, Turkey to the US and other Nato allies. That base is Incirlic, and it is strategically vital to access the entire middle East and during the cold war it was the base of operations for U2 surviellance of the Southern Soviet Union. The US lost their main middle east Air Base, Wheelus Air Base at Tripoli, Libya
When Gadaffi staged his coup on King Idris. I also served there. You’re welcome.


80 posted on 03/25/2013 4:50:25 AM PDT by billhilly
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To: billhilly
I'd like to add that one of the main reasons we brought Turkey into NATO was to bottle up the Russian Navy in Odessa. It was also a way to show Russia who was boss when we stationed nuclear missiles on Turkish soil. That didn't work out so well.

Turkey, after Ataturk’s reforms, was ready to leave the muslim world behind, or so the thinking went, and join the Western nations. That didn't work out so well either.

As for surveillance of Russian ELINT, Turkey was much like Pakistan, but easier to access, it was also the only place which could get good tropospheric internal communications (phone calls and Molnya data), data dumps from Soviet mil and deep space satellites, direct access to cosmonaut comms, and also (until they went over to all landline) the only place to intercept the Soviet launch telemetry from Baikonur.

The U2 intel was great, but the ELINT was priceless

But, more often than not, the Turkish military hindered collection whenever they saw an opportunity.

Today Turkey, with its move to hardline Islam, is becoming more chaotic and dysfunctional internally, thus fast approaching irrelevance as a NATO member.

85 posted on 03/25/2013 6:54:02 AM PDT by PIF (They came for me and mine ... now it is your turn ...)
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