On Tuesday, April 20, 1982, a senior official of Turkey's ruling military junta warned the Soviet ambassador that he was holding the Soviet Union strictly responsible for the Greek attack on the NATO base in Izmir the previous day. That attack claimed the lives of an estimated 200 people, including 18 Americans attached to the base, H.Q. of the Southeast Sector. Speaking in Ankara, Prime Minister Bülent Ulusu said it was a well-established fact that the Russians were supplying the Greek armed forces with military weapons and intelligence data gathered from satellite reconnaissance. He added that it was because of this data that the Greek warplanes were able to circumvent Turkish defenses. Admiral Ulusu asserted that his nation would be able to take strong measures to counteract the Soviet threat. He did not rule out such measures as blocking the strategic Bosporus in order to deny the Soviet Union's only access from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. The Soviet ambassador, Khasan Borhan, angrily rejected that protest. He denied that the Soviets were sharing any of their intelligence data with the Greek government of Andreas Papandreou and said that any attempt to blockade the Bosporus would be considered an act of war by Turkey and its NATO allies, the latter reference having been taken to include the United States.
In Washington D.C., USA, John Heinz (Dem., Pa.), chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations Committee, had announced the formation of an investigatory panel to discover the reasons why NATO air and ground defenses in Turkey failed to stop an intensive Greek aerial attack on the vital NATO air base near Izmir. Turkish sources had said that 180 sailors and civilians were killed, among them 14 Americans stationed at the base. "If the Greeks can get through that easily," he had said, "then what about the Russians?" For years, the Americans had been pouring billions of dollars into their defensive systems around the world, and what he personally wanted to know was whether or not it was working. The incident seemed to indicate that it was not.
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