Turkey said Tuesday a Patriot missile defence system was being deployed in the centre of the country, a day after NATO intercepted a second ballistic missile fired from Iran in Turkish airspace.
The move was announced after a phone call between Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian, with the Iranian president denying the missile had been fired from Iran.
“Necessary measures are being taken for the security of our borders and airspace, and consultations are being held with NATO and our allies.
“In addition to the measures we have taken at the national level, NATO has strengthened its air and missile defence measures,” a Turkish defence ministry statement said.
“Within this scope, a Patriot system assigned to support the protection of our airspace is being deployed in Malatya” in central Turkey.
Malatya is the home of Turkey’s Kurecik air base, a key facility manned by US troops which houses a NATO early-warning radar system that can detect Iranian missile launches.
Although Ankara has categorically denied that the radar data has ever been used to help Israel, its presence has rattled Tehran.
The deployment came a day after NATO shot down a second missile from Iran, prompting Washington to shut down its consulate in the southern city of Adana and urge all American citizens to leave southeastern Turkey.
US troops are also stationed at Turkey’s Incirlik air base, another key NATO facility just 10 kilometres (six miles) outside Adana.
Kurecik lies some 350 kilometres further to the north east.
Both bases are a deeply sensitive issue for Turkey, with police arresting three journalists over footage filmed near Incirlik just hours after the war began, citing national security concerns.
‘Missiles didn’t come from Iran’
Iran’s Pezeshkian phoned Erdogan overnight, the Turkish president’s office said in a posting on X.
It said Pezeshkian had told him that “the missiles that entered Turkey’s airspace did not originate from Iran” and pledged to “conduct a comprehensive investigation into the matter”.
Erdogan, who had earlier warned Iran against any further “provocative steps”, told him that “under no circumstances can the violation of our airspace be condoned”, saying Turkey would “continue to take all necessary measures against this”.
He also expressed hope that the choice of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as Iran’s new supreme leader “would be a means to peace in the region”.
Since the US-Israeli war against Iran started, Tehran has launched strikes across the Middle East. Aside from the two interceptions over the course of five days, Turkey appears to have been spared.
After the first ballistic missile was shot down in Turkish airspace on March 4, NATO said it had strengthened its “alliance-wide ballistic missile defence posture”, but did not give any details for operational security reasons.
Monday’s incident was also denounced by Paris, with foreign ministry spokesman Pascal Confavreux saying: “France condemns in the strongest possible terms” the Iranian missile launch, urging Tehran to “halt its unjustified strikes targeting states in the region”.
Discussion about this post