Immediately following her commissioning, Turner began undergoing conversion to destroyer picket ship at Boston, Mass.

On 8 October, she departed Norfolk, Virginia and steamed — via Pensacola, Florida, the Panama Canal, and San Diego, California — to Hawaii, arriving at Pearl Harbor on 28 November.

There, she prepared for duty in the Tokyo area and, on 10 December, departed the Hawaiian Islands and proceeded to Japan.

The ship operated along the west coast until August 1947, mainly participating in hunter-killer and fleet exercises.

On her eighth Mediterranean cruise in 1958, she acted as a picket ship for Task Force 61 during the Lebanon crisis.

In 1961, the Charleston Naval Shipyard installed a new variable-depth sonar, adding to Turner's submarine detection equipment.

She again provided assistance to the American space program in February 1966 when she patrolled an alternate recovery station — at a point midway between South America and Africa, not far from the equator — as a backup site for a Project Apollo test flight.

Although the US was in the habit of sending two destroyers to the Black Sea for a few days every six months, the Soviets raised a stink this time, claiming that the Dyess had nuclear capabilities, and threatening to take action against the ships if they passed into the disputed waters.