Right now, news around the world has been reporting that Turkey may now be in possession of nuclear weapons originally controlled by the US:
And over the weekend, State and Energy Department officials were quietly reviewing plans for evacuating roughly 50 tactical nuclear weapons that the United States had long stored, under American control, at Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, about 250 miles from the Syrian border, according to two American officials.
Those weapons, one senior official said, were now essentially Erdogan’s hostages. To fly them out of Incirlik would be to mark the de facto end of the Turkish-American alliance. To keep them there, though, is to perpetuate a nuclear vulnerability that should have been eliminated years ago.
“I think this is a first — a country with U.S. nuclear weapons stationed in it literally firing artillery at US forces,” Jeffrey Lewis of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies wrote last week.
For his part, Mr. Erdogan claims nuclear ambitions of his own: Only a month ago, speaking to supporters, he said, he said he “cannot accept” rules that keep Turkey from possessing nuclear weapons of its own.
“There is no developed nation in the world that doesn’t have them,” he said. (In fact, most do not.) (source)
The Drudge Report presented this particular story with the title “Erdogan Holding 50 US Nukes Hostage”
Now accidents can and do happen. One should not say that such is an impossibility. However, it does not make sense that Erdogan would “hold hostage” US nukes.
First, if the US was ever seriously threatened with nuclear war, she would do one of two things. In the case of most nations, she would probably bomb it back into the stone age. In the case of major nations, she would get very close to them and try to manipulate all circumstances to their favor, and eventually expect war in about a decade.
She has done nothing of this. She has instead just “backed away” and allowed for Turkey to have nuclear weapons that were left there at the base.
Second, and related to the first point, does one not think it odd that the US would just “leave” a bunch of tactical nuclear weapons at a base, knowing that Turkey is coming? One would think that they would clean up those sorts of sensitive technologies and evacuate them quickly. Why would she let them fall into the hands of another nation, assuming she did not want that nation to have them, and then if such were to “accidentally” happen, why would she then go talking about it?
Big mistakes are not talked about by the US, but hidden and only come out year later usually after a historical, journalist, or somebody with a real love for a particular even starts digging into declassified archives decades after the event happened and discovers a highly blacked out document with some still non-hidden text that points him to a series of other documents that confirm such a fact, at which time the CIA or FBI will either issue a small statement saying it was true but doesn’t matter, or issue a statement that criticizes a different part of the same research but does not address the original question in order to give the impression of having answered the matter but never doing so.
Third, if Turkey really did do this, it would objectively defeat the point of Gladio, which was that the US has been arming Turkey since just after the end of the Second World War with Germany to make her into a powerful military. It is possible this happened, but it is unlikely, just like with the situation with ISIS fighters. We known that the US trained ISIS and uses them for political reasons at specific times, so why would Turkey kill US assets, but rather with US approval, release them and militarily coordinate with them.
Fourth, Trump likes Erdogan, as he said this in his own words. Trump has given presents to Erdogan before (here and here for two examples). Would it be unreasonable to think that Trump might give him another gift?
Turkey is a world power, and as the article notes, Erdogan has complained about a lack of nukes before. One truly does not know the size or capacity of Turkey’s true nuclear capabilites. But considering this statement, could it be possible that this “hostage” situation is just a cover for the US giving weapons to Erdogan? It should absolutely not be ruled out of possibility, as the US, Germany, and Turkey are all friends, and they work together for the benefit of each other.