Table of Contents
American Jet Takes Down Turkish Drone
According to an American official, on Thursday, an US fighter jet shot down a Turkish drone flying at a high altitude with missiles in the sky, in northeastern Syria, in an area where American ground troops were stationed.
The official stated that after a dozen unanswered calls to Turkish military officers, an F-16 brought down the drone, warning that it was within the US military zone, and if it did not retreat, it would be considered a threat to American self-defense.
The incident of shooting down the Turkish drone comes shortly after Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) carried out retaliatory aerial attacks on locations associated with Kurdish rebel groups in northern Iraq, claiming responsibility for recent bombings in Ankara.
Reuters reported on Thursday that the Turkish Ministry of Defense stated in a release that the drone did not belong to the Turkish armed forces.
Both the United States and Turkey are members of the NATO alliance, and the Thursday incident is likely to further strain tensions between the two countries, who were already at odds over Turkey’s refusal to allow Sweden to join the alliance.
There are approximately 900 US soldiers in eastern Syria who continue to work alongside Syrian Kurdish forces to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State.
Turkey has repeatedly claimed that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the PKK are one and the same. The United States had previously criticized Turkey’s aerial attacks within Syria, where US-backed Kurdish forces were targeted.
In November, American officials had stated that a Turkish aerial attack had come within 130 meters of American troops in the area.
A spokesperson for the United States Central Command had said at that time, “These strikes put our soldiers at risk and jeopardize the mission to defeat ISIS.”
The aerial attack occurred at a time when the Turkish military was conducting a ground campaign against SDF forces in northern Syria, causing Kurdish groups to suspend their joint military campaign with American forces.