U.S. military shoots down armed Turkish drone in Syria
An American fighter jet shot down an armed Turkish drone on Thursday as the unmanned aircraft approached U.S. troops in northern Syria, the Pentagon said, acknowledging an unusual, alarming encounter between NATO allies that occurred as deadly violence has spiked throughout the region.
Air Force F-16s closed in on the drone about 11:40 a.m. local time after it came within a half-mile of American troops in Hasakah, said Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman. Hours earlier, U.S. military personnel, who are partnered with Kurdish forces there as part of a long-running mission to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State, observed a barrage of airstrikes nearby, he said.
“It’s a regrettable incident, but U.S. commanders on the ground did assess that there was a potential threat, so they took prudent action,” Ryder said.
Turkey’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
The incident prompted a series of phone calls between top U.S. and Turkish military officials. It follows days of escalating conflict between Turkey and the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has fought a long insurgency against the Turkish state.
Turkey deems the Kurdish forces partnered with U.S. troops in Syria, a militia group known as the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG, to be an affiliate of the PKK. The U.S. government disagrees.
On Sunday, two suspected PKK militants carried out a suicide bombing near government buildings in Ankara, the Turkish capital. The attackers were killed and two Turkish policemen were wounded.
The same day, Turkey’s Defense Ministry announced military operations against the PKK in northern Iraq – action that was taken, the ministry said, “to eliminate terrorist attacks against our people.”
On Wednesday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the Ankara attackers had come to Turkey from Syria, where he said they were trained. Turkey’s response to the attack would be “very clear,” he said, warning that for Turkey, “all infrastructure-superstructure and energy facilities belonging to the PKK and YPG in Iraq and Syria are the legitimate targets,” according to the state-run Anadolu news agency.
Fidan also warned unnamed “third parties” to stay away from such facilities, in a possible reference to foreign forces present in northern Syria, including the United States.
Andolu reported that the Turkish National Intelligence Organization was responsible for the airstrikes around Hasakah on Thursday. The attack targeted “PKK/YPG weapons and ammunitions warehouses” and “terrorist attack and sabotage units,” it said.
Kurdish officials claimed the attacks hit warehouses and a gas station, with several civilians killed in the process.
A seemingly unrelated drone attack on a military academy in Homs, in central Syria, killed at least 80 people on Thursday, Syrian authorities said.
Though longtime NATO allies, the United States and Turkey have a complicated relationship. The two have clashed over human rights, Ankara’s closeness with Moscow and, most recently, its opposition to Sweden’s entry into the military alliance.
U.S. officials declined to comment on the shoot-down for hours, waiting until after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke with his Turkish counterpart, Defense Minister Yasar Guler. Ryder, addressing reporters at the Pentagon, said that Turkey remains one of Washington’s strongest and most-valued allies. The two senior defense officials pledged to each other that the United States and Turkey would “closely communicate and coordinate.”
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with his Turkish counterpart, Gen. Metin Gurak, said Col. David Butler, a spokesman for Brown. The generals discussed “the need to follow common deconfliction protocols to ensure the safety of our personnel in Syria following today’s incident,” Butler said.
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Kareem Fahim in Datca, Turkey, and Sarah Dadouch in Beirut contributed to this report.