I am trying to understand exactly why Turkey is considered such an important ally of the USA by our State Dep?

Location, location, location.

The US needed Turkey during the cold war. Since the Soviet Union fell, it has lost much of its importance.

It is what Curious1 said, "Location, location, location". What serves the Military Industrial Complex is what shapes our current foreign policy. The Beast of the Bible is the war god Marduk and military contractors are feasting at his table in this life. Not the true citizens on the front line risking life and limb at this very moment so I do not have to wear a Shroud to leave my house, I mean the Profiteers draining our treasury and our pocketbooks at the gas pump.

They share a border with Iraq, and are the only country that allow us to use their territory for staging for the war. Iraq has only a tiny amount of sea coastline, and it's in the Basra region, which the British are in the process of pulling out of, so if we lose sea access to Iraq, we'd better have some serious land access. No Turks, no easy access to Iraq.

Plus, they are the one of the few predominantly Muslim countries with a secular government.

Turkey is an important ally of the USA due to it's location at the intersection of Asia and Europe

Here is the answer ;)

Friendship between Turkey and the United States dates to the late 18th century and was officially sealed by a treaty in 1830. The present close relationship began with the Second Cairo Conference in December 4-6, 1943, and the agreement of July 12, 1947 which implemented the Truman Doctrine.

Turkey sided with the United States during the Korean War of the early 1950s, providing active military support to the U.S. forces. During the Gulf War of 1990, the Turkish Armed Forces contributed to the coalition forces, and Turkey supported the initiatives of the U.S. in the region. The country hosts the Incirlik Air Base, a major operations base of the United States Air Force, since 1954. Following its membership in 1952, Turkey became the bulwark of NATO's southeastern flank, directly bordering Warsaw Pact countries and risking nuclear war on its soil during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

The U.S. and Turkey have had a Joint Economic Commission and a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement for several years. In 2002, the two countries indicated their joint intent to upgrade bilateral economic relations by launching an Economic Partnership Commission. In 2005, Turkish exports to the U.S. totaled $4.9 billion, and U.S. exports to Turkey totaled $5.3 billion.

Like most alliances, it is an alliance of convenience.

Don't get all caught up in making everything a moral issue.

You'll end up defeated and in the prison of some jerk who has decided that your attitude, you religious beliefs, the color of you skin, how you dress, you sexual orientation or your gender is not in line with his version of morality.

If you are not prepared to do whatever it takes to defend yourself, surrender and save us all the trouble of cleaning up the mess.

The United States wants to work with Türkiye to shape a future in which Türkiye plays an ever increasing role in regional peace, stability and prosperity, in which Türkiye is both anchored in Europe and a bridge to the East

Because most of the supplies our troops need are shipped through Turkey, and their air space is needed to bring seriously injured soldiers to Germany for surgery. Going around Turkey would cost valuable time and lives in flight to an operation.

It is obvious that you have a problem understanding the importance of the US-Turkey relationship.

It is also obvious that the main reason for this is that you are much too obssessed with the `so called` Genocide.

In order to understand the importance of Turkey you have to have an objective approach, which seems unlikely for you to have.

Your question is about the importance of TR-USA relationship but almost all your thesis is based upon `so called` Armenian Genocide.

Then here comes the another question. Why Americans care that much with a nation (Armenians) who have a terrorist past, who have a past full of cruelties, horror, crime and killings?

The proof?

You`ll find the related link below. The article is from Washington Times. The writer is Bruce FEIN. The date of the article October 16, 2007.

First the article:

Armenian crimes against humanity and war crimes against the Ottoman Turkish and Kurdish populations of eastern and southern Anatolia during World War I and its aftermath have been forgotten amidst congressional preoccupation with placating the vocal and richly financed Armenian lobby.

Last Wednesday, the Armenians hectored members of the House International Relations Committee by a 27-21 vote into passing a counterfactual resolution convicting the Ottoman Empire and its successor state, the Republic of Turkey, of genocide. A historically supportable resolution would have condemned massacres against Armenians with the same vigor, as it should have condemned massacres by Armenians against the innocent Muslim populations of the crumbling Ottoman Empire.

Capt. Emory Niles and Arthur Sutherland, on an official 1919 U.S. mission to eastern Anatolia, reported: "In the entire region from Bitlis through Van to Bayezit, we were informed that the damage and destruction had been done by the Armenians, who, after the Russians retired, remained in occupation of the country and who, when the Turkish army advanced, destroyed everything belonging to the Musulmans. Moreover, the Armenians are accused of having committed murder, rape, arson and horrible atrocities of every description upon the Musulman population. At first, we were most incredulous of these stories, but we finally came to believe them, since the testimony was absolutely unanimous and was corroborated by material evidence. For instance, the only quarters left at all intact in the cities of Bitlis and Van are Armenian quarters ... while the Musulman quarters were completely destroyed."

Niles and Sutherland were fortified by American and German missionaries on the spot in Van. American Clarence Ussher reported that Armenians put the Turkish men "to death," and, for days, "They burned and murdered." A German missionary recalled that, "The memory of these entirely helpless Turkish women, defeated and at the mercy of the [Armenians] belongs to the saddest recollections from that time."

A March 23, 1920, letter of Col. Charles Furlong, an Army intelligence officer and U.S. Delegate to the Paris Peace Conference, to President Woodrow Wilson elaborated: "We hear much, both truth and gross exaggeration of Turkish massacres of Armenians, but little or nothing of the Armenian massacres of Turks. ... The recent so-called Marash massacres [of Armenians] have not been substantiated. In fact, in the minds of many who are familiar with the situation, there is a grave question whether it was not the Turk who suffered at the hands of the Armenian and French armed contingents which were known to be occupying that city and vicinity. ... Our opportunity to gain the esteem and respect of the Muslim world ... will depend much on whether America hears Turkey's untrammeled voice and evidence which she has never succeeded in placing before the Court of Nations."

The United States neglected Col. Furlong's admonition in 1920, and again last Wednesday. Nothing seems to have changed from those days, when Christian lives were more precious than the lives of the "infidels."

Justin McCarthy of the University of Louisville concluded that a staggering 2.5 million Anatolian Muslims died in World War I and the Turkish War of Independence. More than 1 million died in the Six Provinces in Eastern Anatolia, as Armenians with the help of Russia's invading armies sought to reclaim their historical homeland.

In contrast, best contemporaneous estimates place the number of Armenians who died in the war and its aftermath at between 150,000 and 600,000. The Armenian death count climbed to 1.5 million over the years on the back of political clout and propaganda.

The committee voiced horror over the Armenian suffering, but said nothing about the suffering Armenians inflicted on the Muslim population. Nor did the committee deplore the 60 years of Armenian terrorism in the Ottoman capital Istanbul, including assassination of the Armenian patriarch and an attempted assassination of the sultan as he was leaving prayer. Armenian terror was exported to the U.S. mainland and Europe by fanatics who murdered over 70 Turkish diplomats, three of them in Los Angeles and one honorary consul general in Boston.

Mourad Topalian, erstwhile head of the Armenian National Committee of America, a lead lobbying group behind the resolution and major campaign contributor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members, was sentenced to 36 months in prison for complicity in a conspiracy to bomb the Turkish mission at the United Nations. Yet Toplain has escaped a terrorist label by either Armenian-Americans or their echo chambers in Congress.

The home of the late Professor Stanford Shaw of the University of California-Los Angeles was firebombed in retaliation for his academic courage in disputing the Armenian genocide claim. Like Benito Mussolini, Armenians believe truth is an assertion at the head of a figurative bayonet.

In parts of Europe, disbelief in the Armenian genocide allegation is a crime on par with Holocaust denial. But the Holocaust was proven before the Nuremburg Tribunal with the trappings of due process. Armenians, in contrast, have forgone bringing their genocide allegation before the International Court of Justice because it is unsupported by historical facts.

In contrast to open Ottoman archives, significant Armenian archives remain closed to conceal evidence of Armenian terrorism and massacres.

If the resolution's proponents had done their homework and put aside religious bigotry, they would have reached the same conclusion as author and Professor Bernard Lewis of Princeton University: "[T]he point that was being made was that the massacre of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire was the same as what happened to Jews in Nazi Germany and that is a downright falsehood. What happened to the Armenians was the result of a massive Armenian armed rebellion against the Turks, which began even before war broke out, and continued on a larger scale."

Brian Ardouny of the Armenian Assembly of America in a videotaped interview for a documentary on the Armenian Revolt clucked: "We don't need to prove the genocide historically, because it has already been accepted politically." Congress should reject that cynicism in defense of historical truth.