U.S. NAVY R4D

"...NAVAL MISSION / ANKARA TURKEY" is visible on the nose of the transport to the left

I think Ankara Air Station is the old Etimesgut Air Field because the TUSLOG history states it is about 5 km from downtown (if anyone can verify the above statement, please e-mail me). Five kilometers was the approximate distance when I drove a large fork lift from the air field to the JAMMAT motor pool for maintenance. The forward gear was out so I had to look backward driving in reverse all the way at about 2 MPH. I took a spotter riding on the hood to shoo Turks out of the way. They gawked at us like they had never seen anything like that, and I supposed they hadn't. Boy! I imagine we did look like something else driving down Ataturk Blvd. on that thing :-)

Is the ordinary Turkish soldier tough? disciplined? Read on...

1. In the Turkish Army & Air Force a NCO rated a salute from a Turkish "askeri" (soldier). Therefore since we wore our fatique uniforms back and forth to work and on the crowded streets of Ankara, there were hundreds of askeris at any given time and we were required to return their salutes we were nearly wore out saluting.

2. I had heard that a NCO in the Turkish military had nearly the power of life or death over an ordinary askeri. The more the stripes he had, the more power he had. This was really brought home to me one day when I was standing under the wing of our C-47 waiting for the crew and passengers to load when a flight of about 40 Turkish Air Force askeri (4 ranks of 10 each) marched by with the buck sergeant in charge on my side of the formation and slightly behind. As they passed me, an askeri in the second rank happened to catch my eye and turned his head to look at me, the sergeant saw him, he ran up and pulled him out of the formation, hit him up side the face, knocked him down and kept marching. The askeri got up, shook his head and ran to catch up with the formation. Not a word had been said.

3. I was told that I made as much money as a Major General in the Turkish AF. However a general had a lot of fringe benefits that I didn't have; e.g. a general officer received quarters to live in, 3 or 4 askeris to do the housework, and anything else the family wanted him to do. Each day you could see askeris standing in line for their generals waiting to get items that were rationed, such as tea, coffee, sugar and other items.

4. An askeri was drafted for 2 years, received one pair of shoes, onewinter uniform and one summer uniform (as could be expected, there were a lot of ragged uniforms around), he was paid the equivalent of 38 cents a month plus 4 chits to go to the compound ("Kerhane" in Turkish) in the old city where all of the streetwalkers were sent when they were caught. [A Turkish-born souce says that a "Kerhane" ("Compound") was NOT any kind of prison, but rather a government-approved place of prostitution for "down-on-their-luck" women to earn money.]

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