On Thursday, 5 October, an American F-16 shot down a Turkish TAI Anka-S unmanned aircraft over northern Syria, according to reports from the U.S. Department of Defense. The Turkish government has not admitted to losing the UAS but has confirmed that the military and National Intelligence Agency have been conducting airstrikes against Kurdish militias in Hasakah, near the Turkish border. Reportedly, the UAS was not targeting U.S. assets, but the decision was made to shoot it down after it flew within 500m of U.S. ground forces.
What makes this event important is that Turkey and the United States are ostensibly allies due to their common membership in NATO. The U.S. has shared military bases in Turkey since the 1950s and reportedly still maintains part of its nuclear stockpile there. In Syria, however, Turkish and American interests are often at odds. In its ongoing fight against Kurdish separatist militias, Turkey has made artillery and air strikes across the border into Syria; the Syrian government is unwilling to attempt to stop this because the YPG is an enemy of theirs too. The United States has no interest in this dispute but has been conducting combat operations in Syria for several years, ostensibly as part of its fight against Daesh.
Because of the complex politics of the Syrian Civil War, anti-Assad rebel groups fight each other as often as they fight the central government. This is the first time an American aircraft has shot down a Turkish one, but U.S. troops have taken Turkish artillery fire before. There have also been instances of American-backed militant groups fighting each other.
U.S. officials report that they are in talks with their Turkish counterparts to prevent something like this from happening again, so it will most likely not significantly strain relations between the two countries. This incident does, however, highlight the very real dangers of the State Department’s nasty habit of embroiling the United States in unnecessary proxy wars.
Sources/further reading:
https://apnews.com/article/syria-turkey-shot-down-06b5b407e91ffb3d41096bbfe5f1ef75
