Yeah, I recall a couple of your stories about Turkey Bernie. And thanks.
I've been to Turkey a couple times - passing through to Northern Iraq.
My big Turkish disappointment: In 2003, as the Iraq invasion was being planned, I got myself embedded with a group of combat engineers out of Fort Hood who were part of a task force that was going to race into Iraq the first day of the March invasion and capture the oil fields around Abril and down as far as Kirkuk before the Iraqis could destroy them as in Kuwait, 1991. It promised to be one of the big stories in the early days of the war, while most American forces would be grinding up from Kuwait.
But, as some of you will recall, the Turkish legislature vetoed the staging of US forces out of their country. The group I was with re-routed to Kuwait and I ended up attached initially to the 4th ID, then to the 101st Airborne, led by the golden boy himself David Petraeus. I ended up passing through Baghdad, Taji, Balad, Tikrit and then on up to Mosul. I got to know Petraeus enough that I was among the least surprised when he got busted later for shagging that woman writing a book about him. I admired Ray Odierno, another American commander I ended up spending time with, much more.