A group of independent Turkish lawyers has petitioned the country’s courts to arrest nearly a dozen U.S. military personnel over alleged links to a coup attempt against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 2016 and a leaked document purports to show that they were directly involved in planning the plot. These latest accusations again call into question whether it still makes sense for the U.S. government to store dozens of nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base in the country or even use that facility as a springboard for conventional military operations. The Turkish legal non-governmental organization Association for Social Justice and Aid, which includes prominent backers of Erdoğan’s government and enjoys support from the country’s authorities, filed the charges with the Adana Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Aug. 3, 2018. The 60-page criminal complaint also calls for Turkish officials to shut down U.S. military flights from Incirlik, a portion of which the U.S. Air Force has sole control over, and execute a search warrant at the facility to look for additional evidence. So far, the Turkish government does not appear to have acted on any of the charges.

The charges claimed the Americans were “attempting to destroy the constitutional order [of Turkey], attempting to prevent partially or totally the Turkish government from exercising its authority and endangering the sovereignty of the Turkish state,” according to a translation by the Stockholm Center for Freedom, a group Turkish journalists operating in self-imposed exile in Sweden. As such, authorities needed to “arrest the commanders of the U.S Air Force who are the superiors of the soldiers based at Incirlik and took a role in the failed coup attempt on July 15, 2016.” The complaint specifically calls for the arrest of 11 individuals, but it's not clear if any of them are still assigned to Incirlik. The first two are U.S. Air Force Colonels John Walker and Michael Manion, who were, respectively, the commander and vice commander of the 39th Air Base Wing at Incirlik in 2016.

USAF US Air Force Colonel John Walker, in the green flight suit, speaks with then-U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken at Incirlik Air Base in 2015.

It does look like they might have originally intended to seek the arrest of American personnel at the base now, though. U.S. Air Force Colonel David Eaglen was commander of the 39th Air Base Wing until July 10, 2018. But other current and former members of the U.S. military that the Association for Social Justice and Aid wants the Turkish government to detain were never there. These include the present U.S. Central Command chief U.S. Army General Joseph Votel and Director of Regional Affairs for the Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Rick Boutwell. Now retired U.S. Army General John Campbell, who was last in charge of the NATO-led coalition in Afghanistan, is named in the group's complaint, too. On Aug. 7, 2018, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Şafak, which also has strong ties to the president and routinely voices its support for his administration, then released images it says are of a memorandum detailing plans for martial law during the abortive coup with metadata that showed the author’s name was “John.” Turkish officials reportedly found the document while searching through Emails belonging to Hüseyin Ömür, who served as an aide to General Mehmet Partigöç, a military officer implicated in the plot to boot Erdoğan from office.

via Yeni Şafak A screenshot showing the meta data for the purported "coup document" that shows the author "John."

According to the report, Turkish officials are now claiming they plan to investigate anyone named John who was in Turkey at the time. The clear suggestion, however, is that this individual could be Colonel Walker or former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey John Bass, though Yeni Şafak offered no additional evidence to substantiate those claims. Yeni Şafak has also accused retired U.S. Army General Campbell of having a hand in the coup attempt, without evidence, in the past. There have also been previous allegations that Ambassador Bass might have a connection to the incident and Incirlik has been at the center of various conspiracy theories given that the Turkish Air Force, which operates its own facilities at the base, was heavily involved in the plot to overthrow Erdoğan. But tensions between the United States and Turkey have been steadily rising since the coup attempt occurred in general. Erdoğan and his supporters insist that Fethullah Gülen, an Islamic cleric and former political ally of the president who now lives in self-imposed exile in the United States, was the mastermind of the plot. Gülen has been an outspoken critic of Erdoğan’s steadily more dictatorial policies.

US Department of State Former US Ambassador to Turkey John Bass in 2016.