Erdogan"s Insomnia And NATO"s H-Bombs In Turkey

Authored by Nauman Sadiq,

Recently, Pravda newspaper of Russia has reported that the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been suffering from serious sleep deprivation and that he was yawning and dozed off during a press conference with the Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko while on a state visit to Kiev, and the video of the incident has been going viral over social media.

Though this might appear as a minor diplomatic gaffe but bear in mind that insomnia is a serious psychiatric disorder, cognitive functions of sleep-deprived individuals are severely hampered, and such people are prone to committing rash and reckless acts.

Moreover, readers who have been keenly watching Erdogan’s behavior since the July 2016 coup plot must have noticed in his recent TV appearances that his facial expressions have become quite bland lately, he has been lacking in any warmth even when he is hugging and kissing children for public relations’ photo ops, and he has the look of a madman in his eyes.

In order to substantiate this subjective psychoanalytical evaluation of Erdogan’s attitude and body language with concrete evidence, I would draw the reader’s attention to quite a few rash and impulsive acts committed by the Erdogan administration during the last couple of years.

First, the Turkish air force shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24 fighter jet on the border between Syria and Turkey on 24 November 2015 that brought the Turkish and Russian armed forces on the brink of a full-scale confrontation in Syria.

 

Second, the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was assassinated at an art exhibition in Ankara on the evening of 19 December 2016 by an off-duty Turkish police officer, Mevlut Mert Altintas, who was suspected of being a Muslim fundamentalist.

 

Third, the Turkish military mounted the seven-month-long Operation Euphrates Shield in northern Syria immediately after the attempted coup plot from August 2016 to March 2017 that brought the Turkish military and its Free Syria Army proxies head-to-head with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and their US bakers.

 

And fourth, the Turkish military has recently once again invaded Idlib in northwestern Syria on the pretext of enforcing a de-escalation zone between the Syrian militants and the government, despite official protest from the latter that the Turkish armed forces are in violation of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Regarding the July 2016 coup plot, instead of a serious attempt at overthrowing the government, the coup plot actually was a large-scale mutiny within the ranks of the Turkish armed forces. Although Erdogan has scapegoated the Gulenists to settle scores with his one-time ally, but according to credible reports, the coup was in fact attempted by the Kemalist liberals against the Islamist government of Turkey.

For the last several years of the Syrian civil war, the Kemalists had been looking with suspicion at Erdogan administration’s policy of deliberately training and arming Sunni militants against the Shi’a-dominated government of Bashar al-Assad in the training camps located on Turkey’s borders with Syria in collaboration with CIA’s MOM, which is a Turkish acronym for military operations center.

As long as the US was onboard on the policy of nurturing Sunni Arab jihadists in Syria, the hands of Kemalists were tied. But after the US declared a war against one faction of Sunni militants, the Islamic State, in August 2014 and the consequent divergence between Washington’s policy of supporting the Kurds in Syria and the Islamist government of Turkey’s continued support to Sunni militants, it led to discord and adoption of contradictory policies.

And then, the spate of bombings in Turkey claimed by the Islamic State and separatist Kurds during the last couple of years, all of these factors contributed to widespread disaffection among the rank and file of Turkish armed forces, which regard themselves as the custodians of secular traditions and guarantors of peace and stability in Turkey.

The fact that one-third of 220 brigadiers and ten major generals were detained after the coup plot shows the level of frustration shown by the top and mid-ranking officers of the Turkish armed forces against Erdogan’s megalomaniac and self-destructive policies.

More to the point, it bears mentioning that the United States has been conducting air strikes against targets in Syria from the Incirlik airbase in Turkey and around fifty American B-61 hydrogen bombs have also been deployed there.

The safety of those H-bombs became a matter of real concern during the attempted coup plot against the Erdogan administration when the commander of the Incirlik airbase, General Bekir Ercan Van, along with nine other officers were arrested for supporting the coup. The movement in and out of the base was denied, power supply was cut off and the security threat level was raised to the highest state of alert, according to a 17 July 2016 report by Eric Schlosser for the New Yorker.

Anti-nuclear activists around the world have been worried about North Korea’s nuclear crisis. And during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the Democrats made a convincing argument to the American electorate that would they trust a US president affiliated with the infamous Alt-Right movement with nuclear codes?

What’s worth noting in the aforementioned report, however, is the fact that some of NATO’s H-bombs deployed in Turkey are to be delivered by the Turkish air force if the contingency arises. And a Muslim Brotherhood’s fanatic who has been suffering from insomnia and is prone to committing reckless and impulsive acts has absolute control over those nukes.

Therefore, in order to preempt the likelihood of a nuclear Armageddon, Washington should either press upon its NATO ally to constitute a medical review board to evaluate Erdogan’s psychiatric condition whether he is eligible to serve as president or not, or the US should recall those nukes and deploy them in a safer country like Germany, Italy, Belgium or Netherlands which already hosts dozens of similar NATO’s nukes on its territory, according to a report by the Turkish parliament.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism.

Back to Back US Drone Crashes In Turkey Come Amidst Severe Strain Between NATO Allies

Two United States MQ-1 Predator drones have crashed in Turkey within four days, possibly cutting the Air Force"s operational fleet of drones at NATO"s main Turkish base down to half. This comes at a moment when the future of US drone operations in the region remain in question due to heightened political tensions with the Erdogan government and the uncertain future of the war in Syria. On Monday Turkey"s Incirlik Air Base, which hosts US and other NATO personnel conducting operations over Syria and Iraq, released a statement confirming the crash of the drone in southeast Turkey at around 11:50 a.m. (0850 GMT), with no further details given.

Incirlik had confirmed an earlier Predator drone crash just last Thursday (8/17) near the air base. Last week"s statement quoted a US military spokesman as saying:

“At this time the safety of our host nation civilians and the recovery and security of our asset is paramount,” said Col. David Eaglin, commander of the 39th Air Base Wing.  “Our Airmen train continuously to respond to incidents such as this, and we are working closely with our host nation partners to ensure this is resolved without conflict.”

Both incidents, which are being described in official statements as accidents, are currently under investigation. While no fatalities or injuries have been reported in connection with either crash, NATO"s 39th Air Base Wing issued a notice to Turkish residents indicating that any possible property loss or damage claims could be submitted for potential reimbursement. Photos of the second crash quickly emerged on social media and appear to show a downed drone in a private corn field.

The #USAF #UAV crashed in ?anl?urfa"s Viran?ehir corn fields. pic.twitter.com/WR1r0p7Knr

— Cemal (@Acemal71) August 21, 2017

After the formal withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in 2011, the US Air Force negotiated the transfer of one combat air patrol unit (or PAC) of Predators to Incirlik. A PAC consists of a total of four drones, which theoretically allows for constant 24 hour aerial operations within a drone unit (one aircraft over the target area, one preparing to take over operations, one returning to refuel, and one in reserve).

Though it"s unknown if the Air Force later added additional units, a Department of Defense internal briefing from 2013 indicates that the original memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the US and Turkey to allow a single drone unit transfer took five months to negotiate.

An unclassified slide from a 2013 DoD briefing on the original deployment of Predator drones to Incirlik. 

Assuming there was a single PAC in continued operation at Incirlik, this means the recent back to back crashes in southern Turkey have, at least temporarily, reduced the fleet by half. This comes at sensitive time for the US which desires to maintain a drone presence at the strategically located Turkish host base. The Air Force has further already planned to phase out the Predator drones, which are set to be completely replaced by the larger MQ-9 Reapers by 2018. 

But it"s the rocky and worsening US-Turkish relationship which may ultimately deal a death blow for future Air Force drone operations out of Turkey. The two NATO allies are increasingly engaged in heightened diplomatic standoff over official US support for the Kurdish "People"s Protection Units", more commonly known by the acronym YPG, which forms the backbone of the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) operating in Syria. Turkey sees no distinction between the YPG and the PKK, which operates within Turkish borders and is designated a terrorist organization by both the US and Turkish government.

Last May the US rebuffed repeat Turkish requests not to move forward with arming the YPG - something widely seen as pushing Turkey into closer cooperation with Russia. The following month American officials announced plans to charge members of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan"s security service after they were filmed attacking protesters outside of the Turkish embassy in D.C. - further harming diplomatic relations. 

But perhaps the greatest outrage came in July, when Turkish state media leaked the locations of US bases in Syria, putting US special forces personnel and local partners on the ground at risk. A prominent American analyst described the incident as "a F-you” which threatened to permanently destroy US-Turkey cooperation in the Middle East. Furthermore, among the general Turkish public anti-Americanism has long been on the rise over the past years, and US drones falling from the sky over inhabited areas will not make things any better. 

With ISIS now in retreat, and with both the Iraqi and Syrian governments looking increasingly confident in terms of regaining their sovereign territory, it is unclear what purpose US drones in Turkey will serve other than to prop up the SDF in Syria. This is something Turkey already sees as intolerable - the latest drone crashes could signal the beginning of the end for such operations at Incirlik.

Turkey Bars German Lawmakers From Visiting NATO's Incirlik Airbase

At the end of May, the first direct confrontation between Germany and Turkey over the future use of Incirlik airbase emerged, when Turkey"s foreign minister said it is not possible to allow German lawmakers to visit troops stationed at Turkey"s Incirlik air base now, although he said Ankara may reconsider if it sees "positive steps" from Berlin. "We see that Germany supports everything that is against Turkey," Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara. "Under these circumstances it is not possible for us to open Incirlik to German lawmakers right now ... If they take positive steps in the future we can reconsider."

That particular refusal to let lawmakers visit German soldiers at Incirlik air base ultimately led to Berlin begin relocating its troops stationed in Turkey to Jordan.  As Reuters reported last Sunday, Germany began to pull its troops out of Incirlik, following an approval by the German parliament last month, marking the latest step in one of many bilateral disputes, ranging from a post-coup clampdown by Ankara to Turkish political campaigning in Germany.

German tornado jets were due to keep operating out of Incirlik at least until the end of July as part of a mission providing reconnaissance aircraft to support U.S.-led coalition operations against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. In the meantime the necessary material was to be moved to a new air base in Jordan, where the planes are scheduled to be deployed by October.

A German air tanker refueller left Incirlik for the Jordan base on Sunday, the ministry spokesman told Reuters.

Seemingly displeased by the relocation, which Ankara thought would be mostly a bluff and Germany would not follow through, on Friday Turkey went full circle and once again refused German lawmakers permission to visit the soldiers serving at Incirlik, a party defence spokesman said quoted by Reuters, marking a new escalation in tensions between the two NATO allies.

"The government, especially Chancellor Angela Merkel, must now take the necessary steps to ensure lawmakers can soon visit the soldiers in Konya," said Rainer Arnold, defence spokesperson for the Social Democrats, the junior coalition party in the government.

It is unclear just what leverage Merkel will use in its increasingly bitter conflict with Erdogan, who as a reminder, still is the gatekeeper of European stability, as he is still withholding some 2 million mostly Syrian refugees who are just waiting for Turkey to reopen the proverbial door and Erdogan"s permission to resume the trek toward Europe using the now defunct Balkan route. This is known all too well by Merkel and Brussels.

Furthermore, in an ominous twist, Germany is said to have asked for NATO support in rescheduling the trip. As a reminder, both nations are NATO members.

Meanwhile, as reported overnight, Turkey further antagonized both Germany and NATO - as well as the US - when as Bloomberg reported on Thursday, Turkey agreed to pay $2.5 billion to acquire Russia’s most advanced missile defense system. The proposed deal which was first reported here back in November 2016, has been finalized and the preliminary agreement sees Turkey receiving two S-400 missile batteries from Russia within the next year, then producing another two inside Turkey.

Most concerning for NATO, however is that the systems delivered to Turkey would not have a friend-or-foe identification system, which means they could be deployed against any threat without restriction. As we discussed last night, news of the deal are likely to strain relations between Turkey and NATO to the point of breaking, if not beyond.

Disagreements between Turkey, which has the second-largest army by personnel numbers in NATO, and the U.S., the bloc’s biggest military, have also impacted business. No U.S. companies bid for a Turkish attack helicopter contract in 2006 after Turkey insisted on full access to specific software codes, which the U.S. refused to share, considering it a security risk. Turkey partnered with Italy instead in a $3 billion project to co-produce 50 attack helicopters for its army.

And now, very symbolically, it has picked the sworn enemy of NATO: Russia.

Turkey Refuses To Grant Germans Access To Incirlik Airbase

While Angela Merkel is busy sowing the seeds of the next cold war between Germany and the Trump administration (and therefore the US, if only for the next three and a half years), a troubling flashpoint for Germany continues to grow in Turkey where on Tursday, Turkey"s foreign minister said it is not possible to allow German lawmakers to visit troops stationed at Turkey"s Incirlik air base now, although he said Ankara may reconsider if it sees "positive steps" from Berlin. It was not immediately clear just what Turkey"s "demands" or expectations, monetary or otherwise, were from Merkel for it to change its view.

"We see that Germany supports everything that is against Turkey," Mevlut Cavusoglu told a news conference in Ankara. "Under these circumstances it is not possible for us to open Incirlik to German lawmakers right now ... If they take positive steps in the future we can reconsider."

Turkey has prevented German lawmakers from visiting the roughly 250 troops stationed at Incirlik as part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, saying that Berlin needs to improve its attitude first.

According to Reuters, Cavusoglu also said the issue would be discussed with German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who is due to visit Turkey on Monday. Ties between the NATO allies deteriorated sharply in the run-up to Turkey"s April 16 referendum that handed President Tayyip Erdogan stronger presidential powers.

The recent deterioration in relations between Germany and Turkey developed when Germany, citing security concerns, banned some Turkish politicians from addressing rallies of expatriate Turks ahead of the referendum, infuriating Erdogan. Ankara responded by accusing Berlin of "Nazi-like" tactics. Germany has also expressed concern about the widespread security crackdown that followed last year"s failed coup in Turkey. More than 100,000 people have been sacked or suspended from their jobs and more than 40,000 people jailed.

German officials said this month that 414 Turkish citizens with diplomatic passports and other government work permits had requested asylum since the attempted putsch. Berlin"s interior ministry has confirmed that asylum requests had been approved for a number of the applicants, a move that angered Ankara.

Turkey Threatens To Block US From Using Incirlik Airbase

In the immediate aftermath of the failed Turkish "coup" of July 2016, the immediate concern to the US was not the fate of the Erdogan regime, but whether the US would maintain access to Incirlik Air Base, a strategic output for the US airforce, allowing it fast and easy access to most of the Middle East and part of Russia even in the immediate absence of an aircraft carrier. It explains why when Erdogan said he felt snubbed by the US, he cut off the power to the US troops stationed at the airbase, and kept them in the dark for a considerable period of time, perhaps to remind Washington that in Turkey he is the boss.

Fast forward to this week, when on Wednesday, Turkish officials again made a veiled threat to ground U.S. warplanes at Incirlik Air Base over the U.S. denial of air support for the Turkish military inside Syria. The officials questioned the value of having the U.S. fly missions out of Incirlik in southeastern Turkey against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq while Turkish forces are struggling to take the ISIS-held Syrian town of El Bab.

"This is leading to serious disappointment in Turkish public opinion," Turkish Defense Minister Fikri Isik said, adding that "this is leading to questions over Incirlik," Turkey"s Anadolu news agency reported.

He then once again treatened the US, when he said that to avoid repercussions that could affect Incirlik operations, the Defense Minister called on the U.S. to "start to provide the aerial support and other support that the [Turkish military] needs" to take El Bab, which would also drive a wedge between Syrian Kurdish militias supported by the U.S. in actions against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

U.S. Air Force Col. John Dorrian said Wednesday than any actions by Turkey to shut down or limit U.S. air operations out of Incirlik would be disastrous for the U.S. anti-ISIS campaign now focused in Syria on the drive by a mixed Syrian Kurdish and Arab force against Raqqa, the self-proclaimed ISIS capital. What he meant to say is that it would disastrous for the U.S., period, as it would deprive the US of one of its most critical military outputs in the MENA region.

12 F-15s from RAF Lakenheath, UK are deployed to Incirlik AB, Turkey, November, 2015

"It"s absolutely invaluable," Dorrian, a spokesman for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve, said of Incirlik. "Really, the entire world has been made safer by the operations that have been conducted there." Well, that or precisely the opposite - it all depends on one"s point of view.

Turkey briefly closed its airspace to U.S. operations out of Incirlik last July and cut off power to the base during the failed military coup against the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when suspicions ran high among Turkish officials that the U.S. may have supported rebels within the military.  As the coup attempt failed, a high-ranking Turkish officer walked across the Incirlik airfield and tried to turn himself into the U.S. military to seek asylum. His request was rejected, and he was arrested by Turkish authorities.

On Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said, "The U.S. is a very important ally for us. We have cooperation in every field, but there is the reality of a confidence crisis in the relationship at the moment" over Incirlik and the El Bab offensive, which Turkey has named Operation Euphrates Shield. "Our people ask, "Why are they [the U.S. and coalition warplanes] using the ?ncirlik air base" " if they won"t back up Turkish forces against ISIS and the Kurdish militias considered terrorists by Turkey? "What purpose are you serving if you do not provide aerial support against [ISIS] in the most sensitive operation for us?"

U.S. officials have confirmed they are withholding airstrikes from the El  Bab offensive while maintaining overall support for Turkey"s anti-ISIS efforts inside Syria, aimed at sealing off border areas. On Tuesday, Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook said that U.S. aircraft flew near El Bab on Monday but did not conduct any strikes. In a briefing from Baghdad to the Pentagon on Wednesday, Dorrian suggested that weather and poor intelligence on the disposition of friendly forces may have been a factors in the decision not to attack.

"The cardinal rule of air support is to do no harm," Dorrian said, adding that the aircrews may not have had "good fidelity" on enemy positions. The result was "a show of force that was conducted at the request of Turkish forces operating on the ground," he said.

Quoted by Military.com, Dorrian said that "there were ongoing discussions at higher levels "to increase the support and operations" by the U.S. military to back Turkish forces, but "I can"t get ahead of those discussions. I don"t have the details to offer you about what the way forward will be in El Bab. But I do know there has been some good discussion on that, and Turkey is aware of that discussion," he said.

The loss of Incirlik air base would be a tremendous hit to US influence in the region.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction in 1951 of what was to become Incirlik Air Base, and U.S. and Turkish air forces signed an agreement in 1954 for joint use of the base. Incirlik long served as a deterrent to the then-Soviet Union and as a staging base for U.S. operations in the Mideast.

Despite recurring reports that US nuclear weapons are store in the base, the U.S. Air Force will neither confirm nor deny. About 5,000 U.S. service members, mostly Air Force, are based at Incirlik; they are currently confined to the base because of unrest in the region. The U.S. last year withdrew military families from Turkey, and the State Department has also sent home non-essential personnel.

The tensions over El Bab and Incirlik have only added to the downward spiral of relations between the U.S. and NATO ally Turkey, marked by Erdogan"s new alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring about a ceasefire and peace talks to end Syria"s nearly six-year-old civil war. As reported last week, the U.S. was not invited to a Moscow meeting last month of the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey and Iran that led to Putin"s announcement last week of the ceasefire and possible peace talks later this month in Astana, Kazakhstan, with rebel groups.

Turkey has also been angered by what it sees as U.S. foot-dragging on its extradition request for exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, now living in Pennsylvania. Erdogan has blamed Gulen for fomenting the July coup attempt. In addition, Erdogan has bridled at U.S. support for the Syrian Kurdish militia known as the YPG, or People"s Protection Units. The YPG has proven to be the most effective fighting force against ISIS in Syria, but Erdogan considers it an arm of the Kurdish PKK, or Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been branded a terrorist group by the U.S. and Turkey.

A senior U.S. military official, speaking on background last month, told Military.com that the Turks "hate that we support" the YPG.

Erdogan and other Turkish officials have charged that the U.S. is supplying weapons to the YPG. The U.S., while acknowledging support for the YPG, has denied giving them recent supplies of weapons.