After WW2, the Turks were the largest standing army in NATO, had performed excellently in the Korean War, were a linchpin between Europe and the Near East, and had a longstanding historical antipathy towards Russia. Basically, the Pentagon trusted the Turks to be more effective war fighters than anyone else in NATO at the time, and to be able to get to any particular front line faster than any other ally. Eventually, the demilitarization of West Germany placed an effective front-line force in place, but in the early Cold War the NATO allies were not really very united.