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i am wondering how a tau player can deal with a chaos army with the following:

- a ton of cultists supported by a juiced up khorne lord.
- hellturky
- 3 havocs squads with various heavy weapons
- a veritable crud ton of plasma

getting close is about out of the question. the amount of plasma./melta brought to bear kills multiple units dead, without a chance.
sitting back at range, is just begging for havocs to light you up, and the hellturkey takes care of the tougher stuff hiding in cover

my tau have pretty much any model i need. - so thoughts?

There's really not much to the tactical solution for your problems. Cultists are a horde unit, and in a TAC Tau list you should always pack some anti-horde weapons to deal with them. Personally, I feel that Piranhas are a great solution to deal with Cultists. They're suitably cheap, almost invulnerable to Cultist weapons, and they pack tons of shots between the burst cannons and drones that will annihilate Cultist mobs in short order.

The Turkey. This is the one big problem for a Tau army, since this thing will come shrieking out of the sky and mess you up. Again, in any TAC tau list you should include plenty of Interceptor and a bit of Skyfire to go with it. If you have Riptides available to you, then my advice would be to give them Interceptor and Skyfire for their 2 support hard points, and load them up with Ion Accelerator and TL Fusion. The Fusion is a little extra something in case the flier ends its move within 18", but the Ion Accelerator makes for decent anti-air at long range. I normally also make my list with a unit of Missile Broadsides with Interceptor. Sure, you're only hitting on 6's, but you have a ton of shots that are twin linked. If you're running a generic battlesuit commander, I might recommend dual missile pods, Interceptor and Skyfire upgrades, plus the PEN chip so that he always has Tank Hunter. If you're really worried about the turkey, join that commander to the previously mentioned Riptide or Broadside unit, and he will confer Tank Hunter to them, virtually guaranteeing that enemy fliers are smashed the moment they enter play. Remember, all you have to do is force the turkey to evade, or deal a Crew Shaken result, and it will no longer be able to fire its flamer (no template weapons with snap shot).

For dealing with the enemy havocs, there are several options. The first is that you should just pelt them with long range weapons like missile pods. The Missile Broadside will work really well for this. You don't have to ignore their armor, just make them roll a bunch of saves. Or mark them with 2 marker lights, use them to grant Ignore Cover, and then crush them with an overcharged shot from an Ion Cannon. The other option (which I love) is the new Ravarna battlesuit from FW. If you have a Riptide to spare in your army, you might consider converting it to represent one of these beauties. It will wipe out a Havoc squad and then some in a single volley.

Plasma: Just stay out of the plasma guns' range and murder the guys carrying it with any of the tools I already described.

Remember...the turkey has a 5+ invuln...it will NEVER evade.
You'll need to stun/shake it..but it can ignore those on a dice roll if I remember correctly.

Best idea is pack some interceptor.