Turkey imploding | Page 2 | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

DangerDuke said

KVR said
Could lose NATO membership

While there isn't really anything good about this whole thing, Nato is pretty defunct at this point so it's not like that would be a real loss.  

True, wonder if the nukes are secured yet

A week ago, the question of whether the U.S. should continue to station nuclear missiles in Turkey was of interest only to a passel of national-security geeks and nonproliferation advocates. One failed coup later, the discussion has spread to CNN, the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere. Who's winning the debate?

The U.S. has an undisclosed number of B61 tactical nuclear bombs -- probably around 50 -- in bunkers at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. The U.S. Air Force has operated out of Incirlik for years, more so recently in the fight against Islamic State across the nearby borders of Syria and Iraq.

The B61 is a variable-yield device, meaning the size of the nuclear explosion can be adjusted as low as 0.3 kilotons or as high as 340. (The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, by comparison, was 15 kilotons.) Such "dial-a-yield" capability is valuable to U.S. deterrence strategy because it remains at least theoretically plausible to potential adversaries that the U.S. would actually use one in a limited nuclear war. (Nobody even remotely imagines that the U.S. would use a massive warhead on an intercontinental ballistic missile other than in an existential fight against a major power such as Russia.)

The U.S. stores a few hundred other B61s at bases in Europe, with allies like Belgium, the Netherlands and Italy. At those facilities, there are NATO-member planes equipped to carry the tactical nukes. Oddly, there are no such planes at Incirlik or in the Turkish air forces, meaning after a coup in Turkey, the new regime would not immediately be capable of deploying the weapons. 

But wouldn't it be safer to keep nukes out of Turkey's hands altogether? Why keep the B61s at Incerlik?    

The highest-profile argument against the weapons came from the author and filmmaker Eric Schlosser, known mostly for his muckraking reports on the fast food industry. Schlosser has solid background in the issue -- his book about a nuclear-missile accident in Arkansas in 1980 was a Pulitzer Prize finalist -- but his New Yorker piece is more successful at scaremongering than informing. For one, he glosses over the difficulties that either a rogue Turkish regime or terrorists would have in overriding the safety measures required to detonate the bomb, or even to turn it into a "dirty bomb" by destroying the missile casing and spreading a cloud of radioactive material to the surrounding area.

Schlosser also makes a big deal of the handful of times that European anti-nuke advocates have snuck onto bases holding the missiles. But NATO insists they never penetrated bunkers holding the weapons. In any case, the bombs at Incirlik are not guarded by local forces but by U.S. personnel, and in recent years the Pentagon has spent millions upgrading security.

more http://www.bloomberg.....-of-turkey

just banned 50,000 people from leaving

The Turkish government has cancelled the passports of around 50,000 people to prevent them leaving the country as a crackdown continues following a failed coup.

Efkan Ala, the interior minister, said more than 18,000 have so far been detained over the attempt to oust President Tayyip Erdogan, while thousands of government staff are under investigation.

The purges have provoked alarm in the international community, presenting a major stumbling block for Turkey’s campaign to join the European Union.

more http://www.independe.....63961.html

meanwhile at the US nuclear stockpile

https://youtu.be/Il5wyxG5CDs

oh joy

Dozens of US nuclear weapons stored at a Turkish air base near Syria are at risk of being captured by "terrorists or other hostile forces," a Washington think tank claimed Monday.

Critics have long been alarmed by America's estimated stockpile of about 50 nuclear bombs at Incirlik in southern Turkey, just 70 miles (110 kilometers) from the border with war-torn Syria.

The issue took on fresh urgency last month following the attempted coup in Turkey, in which the base's Turkish commander was arrested on suspicion of complicity in the plot.

"Whether the US could have maintained control of the weapons in the event of a protracted civil conflict in Turkey is an unanswerable question," said Monday's report from the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan think tank working to promote peace.

Incirlik is a vital base for the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria, with the strategically located facility affording drones and warplanes fast access to IS targets.

But the Pentagon in March ordered families of US troops and civilian personnel stationed in southern Turkey to quit the region due to security fears.

"From a security point of view, it's a roll of the dice to continue to have approximately 50 of America's nuclear weapons stationed at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey," report co-author Laicie Heeley said.

"There are significant safeguards in place. ... But safeguards are just that, they don't eliminate risk. In the event of a coup, we can't say for certain that we would have been able to maintain control," she told AFP.

more http://www.msn.com/e.....spartandhp