The Obama administration has turned down a Turkish request for the deployment of US Predators at Turkish bases until Ankara stops threatening Israel with armed attack, according to DEBKAfile. Turkey has no functioning unmanned aircraft at present.
Israeli officialdom and military chiefs are doing their utmost to keep the lid on the spiralling Turkish-Israel confrontation, claiming that a military clash is not imminent because the US, NATO and Europe won’t let it happen. Turkey is after all a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. However, DEBKAfile‘s military sources report, the confrontation has already broken surface.
Sources confirm that the Ankara press report of three Turkish frigates bound for the eastern Mediteranean to challenge and disarm Israel warships outside its 12-mile territorial waters was deliberately leaked by Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s office to coincide with his trip to Cairo. Israeli officials are making every effort to conceal the arrival of the frigates opposite Israeli waters, while Washington, the NATO command in Brussels try to dissuade Turkey from carrying out its threat to disable the weapons of Israel naval vessels.
Since Aug. 17, a full-blown war has been underway against PKK strongholds in northern Iraq – generally unnoticed in the West and in Israel.
The Turkish effort is impeded by three problems:
1. They are short of the knowhow for operating the intelligence and technical systems of the 10 Heron UAS purchased from Israel since they expelled the Israeli technicians operating and keeping them in order last year. Ankara says two of the aircraft are “non-operational” and three others suffer from intractable engine problems.
Five more were shipped back to Israel because of a Turkish complaint that they never reached the altitudes guaranteed by Israel’s aerospace industries. DEBKAfile‘s sources report that test flights carried out in Israel showed nothing wrong with the aircrafts’ altitude capability.
2. The home-made Turkish ANKAs brought into service were unable to climb high enough to perform over the rebel hideouts perched in the lofty Qandil mountain peaks. They also lacked the electronics for relaying surveillance data to their command center.
3. Both Tehran and Ankara have no doubt that the intelligence data released to them by the US military in the course of the counterinsurgency campaign is partial and limited. The complete picture remains exclusively in American hands. , Turkey sought the deployment of US Predators on its soil to fill the gap. That request was spurned until Prime Minister Erdogan backs away from his aggressive stance against Israel.
Source: DEBKAfile