Saturday, August 20, 2016

Russia is pushing to use Incirlik AB in Turkey.

Thanks to Don for the link!

via The Australian
Russia is pressing Turkey for ­access to a key airbase used by the US as it tries to extend its ­influence in the Middle East.
The American-built Incirlik base, about 100km from the ­Syrian border, is used by NATO and has about 50 US tactical ­nuclear warheads stored on site.
A senior Russian politician said allowing Russian jets and bombers to use it would be a “logical continuation” of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to rebuild Turkey’s relations with the Kremlin.
“It just remains to come to an agreement with Erdogan that we get the NATO base Incirlik as our primary airbase,” said Igor Morozov, a member of the Senate committee on international affairs.
This would allow the Russian air force to subject Islamic State and other jihadist groups to “constant bombing” and bring the war to a quicker conclusion, he said.
“You’ll see, the next base will be Incirlik,” he told Izvestia after the Kremlin revealed this week its bombers had started using a base in Iran to launch attacks in Syria.
Senator Viktor Ozerov told the RIA Novosti news agency: “It’s not certain that Russia needs Incirlik, but such a decision would be seen as a real willingness on Turkey’s part to co-operate with Russia in the war against terrorism in Syria.”
The above was posted yesterday.  But check this out from July of this year via Pravda.
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu admitted that Russia would be allowed to use Turkish air base Incirlik for the purpose of the struggle against the Islamic State terrorist group.

Ankara may soon give Russia permission to use Incirlik air base for operations against the Islamic State Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with TRT TV channel.
"We will cooperate with everyone who oppose the Islamic State. We have been struggling against them since the very start and we have opened the Incirlik base for those who want to take part in it. Why can't we cooperate like this with Russia? The Islamic State is our common enemy, and we all must fight against it. This is of paramount importance for the implementation of this mechanism into practice and for the prevention of any undesirable incidents. We agree with Russian FM Sergey Lavrov on the subject," he said.

Incirlik Air Base has the territory of about 3320 acres. The base is within an urban area of 1.7 million people, 32 km inland from the Mediterranean Sea. The primary users of the base are the US Air Force and the Turkish Air Force. The base is also used by the Royal Air Force and by Saudi Arabia.
I don't know if an agreement has been reached to allow the US a "face saving" exit from Incirlik but this signals a couple of things.

Most ominously I think it means Turkey is done with NATO.  Second it means that the strategy to "fight ISIS and Assad" has failed.

Something huge is going on folks.  This has implications I can't even begin to imagine.

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