Until recently, the question of whether the United States should continue to station nuclear missiles in Turkey was of interest only to a passel of national-security geeks and nonproliferation advocates. One failed coup later, the discussion has spread to CNN, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post and elsewhere. Who's winning the debate?
The U.S. has an undisclosed number of B61 tactical nuclear bombs — probably around 50 — in bunkers at Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey. The U.S. Air Force has operated out of Incirlik for years, more so recently in the fight against IS across the nearby borders of Syria and Iraq.
The B61 is a variable-yield device, meaning the size of the nuclear explosion can be adjusted as low as 0.3 kilotons or as high as 340. (The bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, by comparison, was 15 kilotons.) Such "dial-a-yield" capability is valuable to U.S. deterrence strategy because it remains at least theoretically plausible to potential adversaries that the U.S. would actually use one in a limited nuclear war.