Report: U.S. military can no longer rely on Turkey for regional ops

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military maintains only limited access to facilities in Turkey, a report said.

The American Enterprise Institute determined that the U.S. military could not rely on facilities in Turkey for regional operations, particularly an attack on Iran.

An American cargo plane takes off from Incirlik Air Force Base in southeastern Turkey. /AFP

In a Republican presidential debate in South Carolina on Jan. 16, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that he had lived in Turkey while serving as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force and that the country had moved “far away” from where it was back then.

Perry, who has dropped out of the GOP race, came under fire from the government of Turkey when he said in the debate that the current government, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party, is in the hands of “what many would perceive to be Islamic terrorists” and that the country should have its membership in NATO reconsidered.

In a report titled “Questions For Strategy, Requirements

For Military Forces,” AEI said most of the U.S. military presence in Turkey

was at the Incirlik Air Force Base.

In all, the U.S. military deploys 1,500 troops at Incirlik, the report

said. An unspecified number of U.S. personnel also served at NATO’s air

operations facility in Izmir.

The report listed U.S. military deployment that could be assigned to any

war against Iran. AEI said Qatar contained 7,500 U.S. troops; Baharin, 5,000

soldiers, and Kuwait, 23,000.

The United Arab Emirates is said to contain 3,000 U.S. military

personnel. The report said Oman also contained an unspecified U.S. presence

with “limited access agreement to air bases until 2020.”

via Report: U.S. military can no longer rely on Turkey for regional ops | World Tribune.