Photo Gallery More Interesting than Cuba
US President Barack Obama (right) during a 2009 visit in Istanbul with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. NSA documents reveal that Turkey and the United States have shared intelligence for years in the fight against Kurdish separatists with the Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK). The documents also show that Washington has conducted wide-scale surveillance against its NATO partner.
Turkey is the NSA's oldest partner in Asia. Even before the NSA's founding in 1952, the CIA had established a "Signit," or signals intelligence, partnership with Turkey dating back to the 1940s. Pictured here is the NSA's Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters.
So close is the working relationship that US officials have set up a bureau in Ankara to manage ties. The office's logo is pictured here.
At the same time, Washington has very closely surveilled its partner. According to the National Intelligence Priorities Framework (NIPF), Turkey is listed as one of the countries most frequently targeted by Washington for surveillance, with US intelligence services tasked with collecting data in 19 different areas of interest. The document places Turkey at the level of Venezuela -- and even ahead of Cuba -- in terms of US interest in intelligence collection.
