NATO is currently undertaking a review of its nuclear posture, including the status of the tactical nuclear weapons that the U.S. maintains in five NATO countries, including Turkey. Some NATO members -- mainly the Baltics and ex-Warsaw Pact states -- want the U.S. to keep the nuclear weapons in Europe, while others (like Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway) are pushing for a dramatic move, including possibly completely removing the nukes from Europe. Turkey falls somewhere in between those countries, but more on the side of maintaining the nuclear weapons, writes Steven Pifer, an arms control expert at the Brookings Institution, in a new paper "NATO, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control."
Turkey has hosted U.S. nuclear weapons since 1961, and currently at the Incirlik air base the U.S. has an unknown, but small, number of tactical B-61 nuclear bombs and fighter-bomber jets that can drop them. (The total number of U.S. nuclear bombs in Europe is thought to be about 200, down from a Cold War number of 7,000.)
The question of U.S. nuclear weapons in Turkey is one that Ankara has been quiet about, and on which the government hasn't taken a public position. That's not too surprising: according to a 2006 survey, 77 percent of people in Turkey were "very or somewhat concerned about the presence of nuclear arms on their territory," the highest percentage in any of the five countries in which NATO hosts nuclear weapons. (The others are Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.) One would expect, too, differences of opinion between the country's current government (which has been reaching out to improve relations with Middle Eastern neighbors) and the military elite (with a strong Western orientation). And probably neither side sees anything to gain in bringing the issue out into the open.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visits Turkey on Friday, and some reports suggest that the Turkish government is prepared to agree to host a NATO missile defense system there. Turkey, you'll recall, wanted to impose several conditions on the system's deployment in Turkey, mainly that it not explicitly target Iran and that information from the system not be shared with Israel.
It's not clear that any of those issues have been resolved, but a couple of U.S. senators have called on the administration to consider using the South Caucasus, instead. Senior U.S. missile defense officials, the senator wrote, have said that "a forward-deployed X-Band radar in either Georgia or Armenia would have significant advantages for the missile defense of the United States," according to a letter (pdf) obtained by ForeignPolicy.com blogger Josh Rogin. (Presumably the reference to Armenia is a mistake and they mean Azerbaijan, which gives a sense of how attuned to the regional dynamics the senators are.)
If this sounds familiar, it's because the same senators said the same thing in February -- though then they were accompanied by two additional senators. It's not clear why those senators dropped out of this campaign, but it could be because the whole idea makes little sense. As Daniel Larison writes:
What does a soccer/football match-fixing scandal in Turkey have to do with the country's arms trade? Well... something, even if it's not clear yet what exactly that might be. But one of Turkey's best defense journalists, Lale Kemal, writes in her column in Today's Zaman that the Ergenekon conspiracy, in which many senior members of the military were alleged to have been plotting a coup against the "Islamist" AKP-run government, may have been getting funding both from corrupt arms sales and from the match-fixing.
Kemal writes that some soccer club members are also local representatives of foreign defense manufacturers, and have been cut out as the AKP government makes a push to import less and produce more of its defense goods.
As the current government has adopted policies to boost the development of local arms, the financial resources of some middleman in the arms business are believed to have fallen.
Early in 2009 a defense industry specialist submitted a thick, confidential file to then-Ergenekon prosecutor Zekeriya Öz. The file contained, among other things, allegations that some Ergenekon suspects might have used resources earned in arms deals to fund the activities of alleged coup plotters. At the time, this defense industry expert filed a complaint with prosecutor Öz's office against the alleged generals and colonels who, he claimed, abused fund revenues earmarked for arms purchases. Öz reportedly launched an investigation over possible links between the arms trade and financial resources that went to Ergenekon activities.
Could Turkey be heading towards membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization? China, at least, seems enthusiastic about it, according to a report in the Associated Press of Pakistan:
“China is very positive for Turkey to become a SCO dialogue partner. However, whether it become dialogue partner it would depend on the consensus of the member states of the SCO”, said Cheng Guoping, Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister...
“Turkey is a friendly country of China and in terms of economic, political, security and people-to-people cultural exchanges and cooperation we have very smooth cooperation”, Cheng observed.
The SCO is an open organization as defined in its charter, he said, noting that it is willing to cooperate with “organizations and nations that hold the same opinions as us”.
How, exactly, China imagines that Turkey has "the same opinions" as China is not clear, but that's an interesting statement, in the context. Last year the two countries carried out two rounds of military exercises, which raised some eyebrows in Washington.
Turkey reportedly had some interest in SCO cooperation a few years ago, but I haven't been able to find any Turkish official commentary on this, or analysis (if there is some out there, I'd love to hear about it).
A U.S.. naval ship, the USS Mahan, visited Istanbul last week for a short port visit. These sorts of things happen all the time and aren't usually noteworthy. But the blog Bosphorus Naval News paid close attention to this visit, and noted that the visit may have been driven by commercial, rather than merely friendly, motivations. The destroyer's visit happened to take place during a big defense exposition, IDEF, and the U.S. ambassador's comments at the expo used the ship as a showpiece for U.S. defense industry:
I join Commander Mondlak and his crew in inviting you to tour the proud USS Mahan. This fine example of American high technology and advanced engineering, and is itself the result of partnerships between numerous American companies, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas, General Electric, Alliant, Gould, and Sikorsky, many of whom are represented at IDEF.
In particular, the Mahan has a sort of radar that is under consideration for the next generation of Turkish ships. And U.S. defense contractor Lockheed Martin had just signed a deal with Turkish manufacturer Havelsan involving production of those radars.
The signed contract of course raises the question whether the next generation of Turkish warships will have SPY radars and components of AEGIS systems on board.
The blog, in a separate post, takes issue with that deal given that Turkey also manufactures naval radars:
The naval security organization BlackSeaFor turns 10 years old this spring, and while its military/security role has been more limited perhaps than its founders envisioned, it has become a useful forum for regional cooperation. That's the analysis of Russian military expert Dmitry Gorenburg. In particular, it is now the only forum in which the Georgian and Russian militaries cooperate, which is no mean feat:
Russia and Turkey have been the driving forces behind BlackSeaFor since its founding. Both states find it a useful venue for enhancing their bilateral relationship and prefer it to other potential naval cooperation options because it is closed to participation by navies from outside the Black Sea region. Several years ago, they sought to turn the initiative into the main counter-terrorism forum in the Black Sea. While this effort succeeded in having counter-terrorism added to the list of BlackSeaFor’s tasks, it had little practical impact on improving the participating states’ maritime counter-terrorism capabilities...
It's the conventional wisdom that Turkey's Islamist Justice and Development Party is leading it "eastward," i.e. away from NATO and its traditional (for the last century, anyway) defense alliance with the West and into the arms of Iran, China and other "eastern" countries. But that's not a correct reading of Turkey today, according to a poll flagged by the Wall Street Journal's Emerging Europe blog.
The poll notes that the unpopularity of NATO in Turkey has been driven not by the AKP, but by nationalists. The poll asked Turks whether NATO is "still essential" or "no longer essential" to Turkey's security. And it found that supporters of the AKP were in fact less likely to say that NATO is "no longer essential" than supporters of the nationalist Nationalist Movement Party and -- possibly more remarkably -- the Kemalist Republican People's Party. And while NATO has become less popular over the past five years among all political groups, it's become much less popular among nationalists than among other Turks.
The Journal suggests that it's nationalists who are in fact pushing the AKP prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan into a more anti-NATO posture:
That’s a finding more surprising to foreigners than to Turks, who have long watched nationalist leaders attack the ruling AK Party for selling out the country to foreign, and in particular U.S., interests.
Turkey has said it would be willing to host an office for the Taliban, in the hopes that would help advance a peace process ending the war in Afghanistan. From the AP:
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that he talked last month about hosting a Taliban office with Burhanuddin Rabbani, a visiting former president of Afghanistan who leads a peace council set up by the Afghan government to work toward a political solution.
“We discussed in detail their request to (establish) such an office and said that we are ready to do everything possible for this process,” Davutoglu said Monday on a trip to Hungary. “If there is such a demand, Turkey will help with full capacity.”
Officials from Afghanistan had previously talked about such a possibility, but Turkey has been publicly silent on the issue until now. Having such an office in a non-neighboring country would obviously make it much easier to come to a political settlement of the war in Afghanistan (and presumably would reduce the chances of dealing with fake Taliban leaders).
In a report (pdf) last month (flagged by the AP), the Century Foundation said some Taliban members were interested:
Turkey has hosted joint "urban warfare" exercises with troops from Afghanistan and Pakistan, comprising sniper and anti-tank units from the three countries. A video, apparently from the exercise:
The number of troops was small -- apparently 128 -- but the meaning of the exercise was more political than operational. Turkey has long been NATO's point of contact for relations with Pakistan, and Washington and Brussels have been trying to get Turkey to help build relations between the militaries of Afghanistan and Pakistan. So this exercise -- agreed upon at a summit between the three countries in December -- is a step in that direction. From the Pakistan military press service:
It is pertinent to mention here that this is the first time that a Trilateral Exercise among the three countries is being conducted on the Turkish soil .It will play a pivotal role in cementing close military ties between the countries in the realm of combating the menace of terrorism and extremism being spearheaded by the inimical forces.
For all the hand-wringing about Turkey's "shift to the East," things like this are a reminder that Turkey is uniquely positioned to manage NATO's relations with countries to its east.
Turkey is ratcheting up the tension with the U.S. over the purchase of next-generation fighter jets, saying that it is putting "on hold" its purchases of F-35s because the U.S. is refusing to share with Turkey some software codes that control aspects of the plane's operations. From Today's Zaman:
Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül said on Tuesday, following a meeting of the Defense Industry Implementation Committee (SSİK), that the negotiations over the F-35 procurement tender had not yielded “satisfactory results.” He said, “We will evaluate the order in the next meeting, in light of the progress made in the talks by then.” He said much ground had been covered in the talks in terms of technology sharing, but this was not enough for Turkey to accept the jets.
An earlier story in the same newspaper explained in more detail the so-called "code crisis":
Though Ankara plans at this point to purchase around 100 of these fighter jets, there is the awareness in the Turkish capital that without the codes in question, possession of the jet planes will only be partial. There are assertions at hand that the F-35s will be controllable from outside sources, that they may be defenseless against electronic warfare and that no changes will be able to be made to their software.
An anonymous Turkish official puts the issue in stark terms:
