Middle East - Best use of FF points for BOS-TLV-IST-BOS?

Next May, my wife and I would like to go from Boston to Tel Aviv, then returning through a stopover in Istanbul (we'll take an internal flight to go to Antalya, etc. most likely) and then back to Boston -- all in Y.

I have two questions -

1) Given my FF points (280K UA MP points, 200K BA EC points, 400K AA points), what would be the best usage of points? I'm a UA 1K, but I'd rather save those points for other travel. We're also saving our AA points for a OW RTW award. Ideally, I would love to get rid of my BA EC points but have heard horror stories about the fuel surcharges. Any advice?

2) I know nothing about Turkey and would like to get advice for where to go besides Istanbul. We love beaches, but want to avoid drunken European tourists. Any advice would be welcomed.

Thanks!

It'd be quite easy to spend the MP miles on CO or any *A partner, and you have many options.
Barring that, AA allows you to book on LY.

Regarding BA, they have the crazy fuel surcharge. If you can somehow get AA to ticket the flight, which I highly doubt can happen, considering they don't fly to Israel nor do they have their code on the LY flights...

I think your best bet is to use the MP miles

Your choices are really limited as the only airline that flies from TLV to IST is Turkish and they are members of *A

You could though possibly get a routing with OW through Jordan or some other European city, but that would involve a lot of backtracking

Right, completely forgot to talk about the IST portion. More of the reason why you should use your MP miles over BA miles is that UA is *A as is TK. They are your ONLY option TLV-IST. (Don't know too much about intra-Turkey.)

Darn, I was afraid of that! OK, thanks anyway.