WASHINGTON
Martin Dempsey, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that there had been times when U.S. sent teams over to do some planning with Turkey; notably on humanitarian zones, ballistic missile defense and also some of Turkey's counter terror concerns related to an unstable northeastern Syria and the PKK.
In a press conference, Dempsey said, "Admiral Winnefeld, my vice chairman, just returned back from Turkey and had conversations with his counterpart about those things. We've been having an intelligence sharing regime with Turkey for about the last five years, and one of the things we're looking to do now is learn lessons from the last five years, recognize a different situation on Turkey's southeastern border and see if there's other things we could do to assist them, as well as to reduce the threat of ballistic missile attack inside Turkey. So it's a work in progress, and we go and come as we need to have those consultations."
Turkey is not only a close bilateral partner, they're part of our NATO alliance, we offer them to share our expertise and also to learn from their experiences, and sometimes they take our offer and sometimes they don't, he said.
