I was told to say “ee” and then, with a (clean) pencil eraser, physically push my tongue backwards until it turned into Ы. It worked like a charm, though I can also see the potential to go horribly, horribly wrong.
I’ve heard it called ‘oborotnoye e’ in radio traffic by Russian speakers akin to Alpha, Bravo, etc.
Ы is not the same sound as a French “u” or one of the German umlauted letters, but is like a “u” with the lips unrounded, like a Turkish “ı”.
This is closer to a military phonetic alphabet you’d hear on the радио.
Anna, Boris, Vasiliy, etc. “Э” is “echo.” A little sloppy, but here’s a chart:
Letter, as pronounced, and the phonetic;
[ah] ah 'Anna
[beh] beh Bo’ris
[veh] veh Va’siliy
[geh] geh Ga’lina, Gri’gory
[deh] deh 'Dmitry
[ye] ye Ye’lena
[yo] yo Yozh
[zheh] zheh 'Zhenya, Zhuk
[zeh] zeh Zina’ida
[ee] ee I’van
[eey] eey I’van 'Kratkiy
[kah] kah Konstan’tin, 'Kostya
[el] el 'Lyuba
[em] em Ma’riya
[en] en Niko’lay
[o] o 'Olga
[peh] peh 'Pavel
[ehr] ehr Ro’man
[es] es Ser’gey
[teh] teh Ta’tiana, Ta’mara
[oo] oo Uli’ana
[feh] feh 'Fyodor
[kha] kha Khari’ton
[tse] tse 'Tsentr, Tsaplya
[cheh] cheh chelo’vek
[sha] sha 'Shura
[shcha] shcha 'shchuka
[tz] tvyordy znak 'tvyordy 'znak
[yery] yeryh 'igrek, yer’yh
[mz] 'myagki 'znak 'znak, 'myagki 'znak
[eh] eh 'ekho
[yu] yu Yuli’ana
[ya] ya 'Yakov
In my Berlitz volume the pronunciation for yery is given as the sound of “i” in “Shirley.”
As for Turkish…welll, konusmaarim turkce. 