One mystery leads to another.
When Lawrence Dalli posted his photos of KURT BURKOWITZ passing Malta in tow of WORLD TUG 1 on 3/10/2015, he added "1960 built buoy and lighthouse tender underway to Turkey for conversion into an Explorer Vessel" LD usually has good reason for his commentaries.
She seems to have been at Harlingen for a while and was indeed planned for conversion "Project Lombok" (one of her former names) in 2015 - see p41 (pdf p21) of
http://www.hoekdesign.com/uploads/hoek_design_newsletter_2015_dig.pdfShe left Harlingen 12/9/2015 in tow of the dreadful** tug KADOKA and arrived Ceuta 22/9. The tow was taken over there by WORLD TUG 1 and departed 26/9. WORLD TUG 1 seems to have bypassed Aliaga and arrived off Istanbul/Izmit 10/10, which is what one would expect for a conversion project at Tuzla.
When KURT BURKOWITZ was toaken to Aliaga is not clear (does anyone know the date of Selim San's photo?
**Detention-12 days from 2012-05-29 at Rotterdam, 21 defects
Detention-21 days from 2013-08-29 at Harlingen, 24 defects
Detention-41 days from 2013-10-24 at Poole, 22 defects
Detention-81 days from 2015-01-05 at Las Palmas, 20 defects
Detention-32 days from 2016-03-02 at Hamburg, 29 defects