NATO Patriot Missiles Show Turkey's Military Weakness
Kadri Gursel writes that Turkey's request for NATO Patriot missiles reveals its lack of capacity and few other options to handle regional threats.
Turkey, perceiving ballistic missile threat from Syria, called on NATO to deploy Patriot missile batteries on Turkish soil against this threat. NATO approved the Turkish request and decided to deploy six batteries, two each from the US, Germany and Netherlands, in Turkey close to the Syrian border.
After joint assessments made with the Turkish government, it was agreed to deploy the US Patriots at Gaziantep, the German batteries at Kahramanmaras and the Dutch ones at Adana. According to press reports, the Patriots will be operational in January. Adana, Turkey’s fourth largest city, is 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Syria border, where the important US-Turkish airbase at Incirlik is located. Gaziantep, an important industrial center with 1.5 million population is 60 km (37 miles) to the Syrian border. Kahramanmaras, the provincial capital with a population of half a million, is 150 km (93 miles) north of the border.
These geographic data illustrate that the deployment of the Patriots doesn’t mean imposing a no-fly zone over Syria. Also, the deployment data indicate that these batteries have no offensive objectives.
The data also shows that the Patriot batteries will not be defending the NATO anti-ballistic missile defense system set up in rural Malatya.
