Abstract

We can often learn from systematic patterns, so let us focus for a moment on the previous champion, Turkey. As a major U.S. military ally and strategic outpost, Turkey has received substantial military aid from the origins of the Cold War. But arms deliveries began to increase sharply in 1984 with no Cold War connection at all. Rather, that was the year when Turkey initiated a large-scale counterinsurgency campaign in the Kurdish southeast, which also is the site of major U.S. air bases and the locus of regional surveillance, so that everything that happens there is well known in Washington. Arms deliveries peaked in 1997, exceeding the total from the entire period 1950-1983. U.S. arms amounted to about 80 percent of Turkish military equipment, including heavy armaments (jet planes, tanks, etc.).