Trump Caving to Turkey Fallout Continues: Erdogan Now Wants His Own Nukes and Posthaste

Tyrant seeks nukes — thanks to Loosey-goosey Trump

Introduction to the following story from NY TIMES (re: Update on Turkey’s invasion into Syria) with this headline:

Turkey's Erdogan says he wants nuclear weapons

Turkey’s president, Erdogan, wants more than control over a wide swath of Syria along his country’s border. He says he wants the Bomb. In the weeks leading up to his order to launch the military across the border to clear Kurdish areas, Mr. Erdogan made no secret of his larger ambition.

He told a meeting of his governing party in September that the West insists: “We can’t have them. Some countries have missiles with nuclear warheads. This, I cannot accept.”

With Turkey now in open confrontation with its NATO allies, having gambled and won a bet that it could conduct a military incursion into Syria and get away with it, Erdogan’s threat takes on new meaning. If the United States could not prevent the Turkish leader from routing its Kurdish allies, how can it stop him from building a nuclear weapon or following Iran in gathering the technology to do so?

It was not the first time Erdogan has spoken about breaking free of the restrictions on countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and no one is quite sure of his true intentions. 

The Turkish autocrat is a master of keeping allies and adversaries off balance, as Trump discovered in the past two weeks also when Edrogan told John Hamre, former deputy secretary of defense who now runs the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington: “The Turks have said for years that they will follow what Iran does. But this time is different. Erdogan has just facilitated America’s retreat from the region.”

Hamre said: “Maybe, like the Iranians, Erdogan needs to show that he is on the two-yard line, that he could get a weapon at any moment.”

However, experts say it is doubtful that Erdogan could put a weapon together in secret, and any public move to reach for one would provoke a new crisis why? 

His country would become the first NATO member to break out of the treaty and independently arm itself with the ultimate weapon.

Already Turkey has the makings of a bomb program: (1) uranium deposits and (2) research reactors, and mysterious ties to the nuclear world’s most famous black marketer, Abdul Qadeer Khan of Pakistan. 

Experts also say it would take a number of years for Turkey to get to a weapon, unless Erdogan bought one, but that risk for Erdogan would be considerable.

Jessica Varnum, an expert on Turkey at Middlebury’s James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, CA said: “Erdogan is playing to an anti-American domestic audience with his nuclear rhetoric, but is highly unlikely to pursue nuclear weapons. There would be huge economic and reputational costs to Turkey, which would hurt the pocketbooks of Erdogan’s voters. For Erdogan, that strikes me as a bridge too far.”

There is another element to this ambiguous atomic mix: The presence of roughly 50 American nuclear weapons, stored on Turkish soil. The United States had never openly acknowledged their existence, until recently when Trump confirmed that. 

When asked about the safety of those weapons, kept in an American-controlled bunker at Incirlik Air Base, Trump said: “We’re confident, and we have a great air base there, a very powerful air base.” 

However, not everyone is so confident, because the air base belongs to the Turkish government, and if relations with Turkey deteriorated, the American access to that base is not assured.

My 2 cents: Stay tuned and BTW Mr. Trump: Thanks for this deeper and much more serious turmoil with this basic Ho Lee Shït – just look at what you really stirred up? So, thanks for nothing. 

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