In response to a recent statement by a senior Turkish official that “if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, then there is no other option for Turkey than to do the same,” we are republishing our relevant article entitled “Turkey does not plan to acquire nuclear warheads, it already has them”:
“Erdogan, in a recent speech, essentially announced Turkey’s intention to acquire nuclear weapons, saying that “some others have nuclear ballistic missiles, shouldn’t we have them too?” The Turkish president is lying, as his country has both ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads in its arsenal. We had previously mentioned Turkey’s actions to acquire a nuclear arsenal and had foreseen that Turkey is capable of equipping its ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads. In the post titled “The Danger from the East: Erdogan is Preparing Nuclear Weapons,” we emphasized that “Turkey, with the help of Pakistani scientists, is able to implement a nuclear bomb manufacturing program.”
Turkish and Pakistani scientists, following a secret plan by the Turkish General Staff approved by Erdogan, have manufactured a small number of “gun-type” nuclear bombs. In this type of bomb, ignition is carried out with a conventional explosive that leads to the collision of two subcritical masses of fissile material. The result is the fusion of the two subcritical masses into a critical mass from which the nuclear chain reaction begins. The necessary uranium required comes from a mine in Anatolia. Turkey has also obtained a small amount of enriched uranium with the help of the Kosovo Albanian mafia from a state of the former Soviet Union. The enrichment of uranium from the Anatolian mine is carried out by the Turks at the Military Research Center in the Küçükcekmece area (near Agios Stefanos) of Istanbul, where a small nuclear reactor has been operating since 1959.
Erdogan’s predecessor as president, Abdullah Gul (2007-2014), had stated in an interview with the magazine “Foreign Policy” that Turkey would not allow any neighboring state to develop nuclear weapons without Ankara also possessing its own. In diplomatic language, this clearly meant that Turkey would manufacture nuclear weapons. In 2006, prominent Turkish nuclear scientist Mustafa Kimbaroglu told the Washington Post that he could no longer support the Turkish nuclear research program because he did not know what goals Ankara was actually serving.
In the near future, with the operation of the nuclear power plant in Akkuyu (and the other two that are planned), Turkey will have the ability to access fissile nuclear material that is necessary for the construction of a nuclear arsenal. Copying similar laws in Israel and Pakistan, Turkey has already ensured that a law was passed in 2015 according to which the waste from nuclear power plants, which is fissile material for the production of nuclear bombs, will not be stored in radioactive waste plants for further enrichment and where there could possibly be international control, but will be able to be used for other purposes. In the clearest way, the Turkish law clarifies that the fissile nuclear material from nuclear plants can be used by Turkey itself for the production of nuclear bombs. We remind you that in our post titled “Turkey by law heralds the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal” we had warned that Ankara is methodically working to take its place on the podium of nuclear powers.
Turkey is also cooperating with Pakistan in the development of ballistic missiles, this cooperation is based on Pakistan’s Shaheen missile program for Medium Range Ballistic Missiles. According to a high-ranking official of the General Secretariat of Defense Industries of Turkey, Turkish companies such as TÜBITAK (Scientific and Technological Research Institute) have collaborated with the Pakistanis in the transfer of know-how for this missile program. The Turkish armed forces have had short-range ballistic missiles since 2007, the Yildirim 1 with a range of 150 km, while later they also manufactured the Yildirim 2 and 3 with ranges of 300 and 900 km respectively. Turkey has already manufactured medium-range missiles with a range of up to 2,500 km (Bora) with Pakistani know-how that are capable of carrying a conventional 1,000 kg warhead or a nuclear warhead, respectively.
So while the West harshly criticizes the “paranoid” regime of North Korea for its nuclear arsenal and the “mullahs” of Tehran for their nuclear program, it keeps silent about the fact that in the Eastern Mediterranean, within ballistic reach of Europe, two countries possess nuclear warheads that they can use for defensive or offensive purposes. In other words, they have the right to annihilate their opponents, something that does not bother the “democratic” West at all.
The US and the West have no moral barrier or limit when it comes to covering up the murderous crimes of the Turks and the Israelis, as long as these crimes serve their geopolitical interests and plans. If the West is so concerned and anxious about the spread of nuclear weapons and their possession by unpopular regimes, let it first start by destroying the nuclear warheads that Turkey possesses.
