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When the Marines and Sailors of the 2nd Marine Corps Task Force arrived in Naples, Italy, in the last week of January, their commander told them they had to be ready for a crisis response.
“If something came up, we needed a deployable mobile communications system and a small element that was ready to respond,” Col. Ryan Howell, commander of the 61/2 Marine Amphibious Task Force in Europe, recalled as saying. Howell is also the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the command element of which he formed the task force.
Two weeks later, on February 6, a devastating 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck Turkey.
More than 45,000 people in Turkey died as a result of the earthquake and its aftershocks, according to the Turkish government, and more than 160,000 buildings collapsed or were severely damaged. In neighboring Syria, nearly 6,000 people have been killed.
The first troops of Task Force 61/2 arrived at Incirlik Air Base on February 8—home of the USAF’s 39th Air Base Wing—and immediately went into action, driving command and control while receiving significant assistance from the 39th ABW and the Army. 1st Combat Aviation Brigade.
At the height of operations, 34 soldiers from the task force were involved, according to Capt. Kenzie Margrom, a Marine Corps spokeswoman.
The main task of the detachment was to coordinate the complex flow of requests for assistance and figure out which resources should go where, working in particular with USAID, or USAID, and Turkish officials.
Howell said he saw the Marines in their downtime — when they “may have ought to have been asleep” — helping Turkish and other American forces load and unload planes carrying supplies.
“The pile of things that have to go on there was maybe 50 meters away, and you’d just see an influx of Marines and soldiers and airmen mixed with the Turkish military and just start handing things over from person to person even helicopters,” he said. “We may not have been able to speak the same language, but the facial expression that was there, the bump of a fist, or the handshake, spoke to a great deal of cooperation that was there.”
At the request of the Turkish government, and with USAID assistance, the Marines and other US forces headed to the city of Antakya to build a 100-bed field hospital, with an emergency room, two operating rooms, and an intensive care unit. According to a press release, the mission was scheduled to take seven days, but was completed in five.
Much of Turkey experienced aftershocks in the weeks following the quake, and Incirlik Air Base was no exception. A 6.4-magnitude follow-on shook the base on February 20.
“I think that really drives home that it’s still a little shaky,” Howell said.
Hoyle added that the Turkish government remains intact and is leading its own emergency response, though it would welcome the help of the joint force.
“We realized we could contribute and help where the Turkish people need us and where the Turkish government wants us to, but what they didn’t necessarily want was a very large international military presence,” he said.
Marine Corps Commandant Gen. David Berger told Defense One in February that the Corps would have liked to have the option of sending an entire Marine reconnaissance unit to Turkey, but was unable to without amphibious ships in the area.
“Here, I felt like the better option, we couldn’t offer it because we have the Marines and the equipment and they’re trained, we just didn’t have the ships,” Berger told Defense One.
Berger’s comments came before the Department of Defense released its proposed fiscal year 2024 budget, which did not include any funding for new amphibious warships. Marine Corps generals insisted that the Corps needed the Navy to maintain at least 31 amphibians.
Hoyle told Marines in the week before the budget proposal that a forward-deployed MEU aboard three amphibious ships gives commanders in theater a wide range of options, without imposing a large military footprint on another nation.
“We all want to be able to have a full MEU in theater, especially when there’s a crisis that needs a response,” Howell said. “And I think, going back to the leader’s comments, that’s what we all want.”
Hoyle emphasized that although the Naval Task Force has now left Turkey, with its last members departing on March 9, the US government continues to provide support through USAID and contacts with NGOs.
The field hospital the troops helped build is functioning.
“The gratitude of the Turkish doctors and nurses who were preparing to take over this facility and begin providing medical services was an amazing experience to behold,” said Howell.
Erin Lewinson is a staff reporter for the Marine Corps Times. She joined Military Times as an editorial fellow in August 2022. She is a graduate of Williams College, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper.
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