Page 6 - TURKRptAUG19

bases, Incirlik and Kurecik, could be at risk, the country’s foreign minister has suggested. Incirlik has been a hub for operations in the Middle East dating back to the early days of the Cold War. Nuclear watchdogs say around 50 US nuclear bombs are stored at the base. It has played an important role in operations against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, although the US pursuit of the terrorist and militia group just outside Turkey’s borders has led to bitter disagreements with Ankara due to the Pentagon’s strategy of arming Kurdish groups in the fight. Turkey sees them as an insurgent threat.
Mountaintop radar. A US radar on a mountaintop in Kurecik has a key role in the operation of Nato’s ballistic missile defence network.
In 2017, Germany pulled its troops out of Incirlik because of diplomatic disputes with Turkey. It transferred them to Jordan.
Erdogan has said his government may have to “rethink” existing orders for Boeing airplanes worth about $10bn. “I’ve told Mr Trump in Osaka that even if Turkey’s not buying Patriots [from US company Raytheon], it’s buying Boeings. We’re good customers. But if it goes on like this, we’ll have to rethink about this issue,” he said. Boeing has an order for 100 aircraft from Turkish Airlines, Turkey’s flagship carrier in which the state holds a 49% stake.
Turkey is dissatisfied by new US proposals for a safe zone in north Syria
and an agreement on the issue must be reached soon because Ankara has no more patience, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on July 25. Cavusoglu said the two Nato allies had failed to settle on how deep the safe zone would be, who would control it and whether the Kurdish YPG militia— armed by the US in the battle against Islamic State despite Ankara’s contention that it is a terrorist organisation linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that has for decades been behind insurgent campaigns in Turkey—would be completely removed from the area.
US special envoy for Syria James Jeffrey was in the Turkish capital for talks on the details of the safe zone.
Cavusoglu noted that US military officials met a YPG leader on July 22, the same day Jeffrey was in talks at the foreign ministry. That indicated Washington was not sincere, he said. Ankara has warned it will launch a military operation east of the Euphrates river if the safe zone issue is not resolved and threats to Turkey are not nullified. Turkey, meanwhile, is working with Russia and Iran, allies of the Syrian government that Ankara opposes, to establish a constitutional committee in the stalled effort to resolve Syria’s civil war.
Halkbank executive Mehmet Hakan Atilla who served a 32-month jail sentence in New York for helping evade US sanctions against Iran returned to Istanbul on July 25 where he was given a hero’s welcome by his family, bank chief executives and the country's finance minister Berat Albayrak.
State-owned Halkbank, like Atilla who has always protested his innocence, denies any wrongdoing. It could still face US fines related to the case, though in recent months the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has not said a word about the issue.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree that removes some special economic measures imposed against Turkey when a crisis in relations between Moscow and Ankara arose in November 2015 after the Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber over Syria, Tass reported on July 25.
6 TURKEY Country Report August 2019 www.intellinews.com