NYC-Japan-Turkey-NYC
 

I am new to using miles and I am trying to develop a strategy where I could fly out of NYC to Japan and then on the return trip stop in Turkey for a couple of days before continuing back to nyc on awards flights. I am not even sure if something like this is possible or what airlines/alliance would be best to focus my earnings on. Currently I got some UR points saved up and I have status on United as well as some miles saved up in my united account. I am not looking to make the trip for another year maybe longer and have a number of credit card apps coming up where I was going to focus on UR bonuses. Is it possible to buy coach tickets and then use miles to upgrade to a higher cabin class?

That itinerary will be considered by UA and US to be U.S.-N. Asia with a stopover in Europe, and will take 90,000 USAir miles (for now and likely as long as USAir doesn't merge with AA) or 120,000 UA miles in business class. US may allow you to route around the world, UA will likely make you go through Europe both ways. You should be able to get 50K miles from UA personal (see post 1654 of http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...redit-111.html) and UA business http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/credi...ted-miles.html, or Ink or CSP cards for UR points.

NoobTraveler had a perfect blog post about this subject just a couple days ago.

Check it out here: ....noobtraveler.com/how-to-book-an-around-the-world-us-to-asia-star-alliance-award-ticket/

In the post he shows how to only use 65,000 UA miles to do the following itinerary:
New York - Seoul
Open jaw to Beijing
Beijing - Dubai (with a 6 hour layover in Bangkok)
Dubai - Boston (with a 12 hour layover in Zurich)

He also even demonstrates a SFO-NRT, SIN-IST, IST-LAX route which is pretty similar to your desired trip.