More than that, Turkey is a member of NATO that participates in US nuclear sharing and has substantial US forces (aside from the nuclear weapons) deployed.
A nuclear attack by Russia on Turkey would not be merely legally and abstractly an attack on the US under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which it would do massive irreparable damage to US credibility to ignore, but would almost certainly be a nuclear attack on US forces in the direct and literal sense.
The text of article 5 doesn’t distinguish whether the attack on the NATO state was justified or even whether the NATO state attacked first.
This lack of blaming is partly why Turkey and Greece had to sign at exactly the same time, so that neither could take advantage of being able to attack the other whilst being themselves shielded by NATO.
“The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all…” -
> The text of article 5 doesn’t distinguish whether the attack on the NATO state was justified or even whether the NATO state attacked first.
Arguably, the text of Article 5 doesn't have to, since an act of aggression breaches the obligations of Articles 1 and 2, as well as the pre-existing obligations which the Treaty explicitly does not alter under Article 7.
I see what you mean - although articles 1 & 2 seem to be treated more like guidelines rather than rules.
Otherwise I struggle to understand how any NATO member could’ve engaged in any of the overt or covert expressions of military force in Iraq 2003, Vietnam, Cuba, Iran, Guatemala, Chile, Egypt, or Algeria to name but a few.
That’s the point. In theory Turkey is covered by the NATO nuclear umbrella.
But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state.
> But in practice how many Americans would be willing to go nuclear in support of a Turkish war against the Russians? In circumstances where Turkey was considered the aggressor state.
The question is how many would be willing to go nuclear in response to Russia nuking US forces in Türkiye in response to a conventional attack by Türkiye, which any plausible "Russia nukes Türkiye" scenario would involve.
It’s not obvious how many casualties the US itself would tolerate before going nuclear.
In circumstances where there were only a couple thousand American casualties, and those were incurred as collateral damage rather than as primary targets, it might make sense for the US to respond with conventional airstrikes and for Russia accept those and not escalate further.
This would depend a lot on the individual president though, like I could imagine Trump/Obama being much more risk averse than personalities like Bush 2 or JFK.
A nuclear attack by Russia on Turkey would not be merely legally and abstractly an attack on the US under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty which it would do massive irreparable damage to US credibility to ignore, but would almost certainly be a nuclear attack on US forces in the direct and literal sense.