Turkey: Turks Discover They Are a (Sort of) Nuclear Power
December 1, 2011 - 4:08pm, by Yigal Schleifer
The homepage of the (newly, and poorly, redesigned) Hurriyet Daily News features a fairly provocative headline today: "Turkey given possession of nuclear warheads, report says." So has Turkey just become the Middle East's newest nuclear power? The real story is a lot less sensational, yet also much more interesting, than that.
Turkey, as a member of NATO, has in fact hosted tactical nuclear weapons since the 1950's. Today, NATO keeps an estimated stockpile of 60-70 nuclear bombs at the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, down from 90 in 2001. Most of these (some 50) are designed to be delivered by United States aircraft (which are not housed at Incirlik and would have to be flown in and armed for any mission). The rest are earmarked for Turkish fighter jets, although it appears that Turkish pilots are currently not being trained for nuclear missions. (Hurriyet's sloppy story follows up on a more carefully written one that appeared the day before in the Vatan newspaper, written by Washington correspondent Ilhan Tanir.)
More:Turkey: Turks Discover They Are a (Sort of) Nuclear Power | EurasiaNet.org
