Turkey continued to bomb infrastructure in Syria’s Kurdish-controlled region after a US F-16 shot down a drone that encroached within half a kilometer of a US base.
Turkish drones conducted multiple strikes within a kilometer of a US base in northeast Syria on Thursday, causing US troops to take shelter in bunkers in the hours before an American commander ordered one of the unmanned aircraft to be shot down, the Pentagon said.
Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder described the shoot-down — the first of its kind between the two NATO allies — as a “regrettable incident” carried out in self-defense. He said that a subsequent phone call between the Turkish and US defense chiefs and and an after-action review determined no evidence of hostile intent by the Turkish forces towards US troops.
“US commanders on the ground did assess that there was a potential threat, and so they took prudent action,” Ryder said, before describing the call between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and his Turkish counterpart Yasar Guler as “fruitful.”
“We will continue to keep those lines of communication open to hopefully prevent these types of incidents from happening,” he added. “Turkey does remain a very important and valuable NATO ally to the United States.”
How it happened: The US military first observed the drones conducting strikes in Hasakah province around 7:30 a.m. local time on Thursday morning, Ryder said.
“Some of those strikes were inside a declared US-restricted operating zone,” he added.
US military officials in the region called Turkish counterparts and warned them to pull the drones away from the American position, two officials told Al-Monitor. The Turkish drones appeared to comply, the officials said. A single drone later re-entered the area around 11:30 a.m. and came within 500 meters of the US base, according to Ryder.
“After a dozen calls to Turkish military officials stating US forces were on the ground in the area and the US would engage in self-defense if it didn’t leave the area, a US F-16 shot down the UAV [drone],” one US official speaking not for attribution told Al-Monitor.
“We provided a detailed location of our forces,” the official added.
Ryder did not confirm whether the drone belonged to the Turkish military or to Turkish intelligence, though two US officials who spoke to Al-Monitor suggested the latter.
Why it matters: Washington has been wary of provoking the Turkish government toward escalation in northeast Syria, where roughly 900 US troops — mostly special operations forces — remain in support of Kurdish-led fighters who guard the imprisoned remnants of the Islamic State group.
In April, a Turkish drone struck near a convoy that contained US troops and the top commander of Syria’s Kurdish forces, Mazlum Kobane, as they approached a civilian airport northern Iraq. Last November, a Turkish drone struck near the perimeter of Mazlum’s headquarters in Syria, landing within a few hundred meters of American troops.
Turkey has long called on the US to abandon the Kurdish fighters, whom it deems to be terrorists linked to the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. The US denies that the groups it backs in Syria are synonymous with the PKK, which it also deems a terrorist group.
The Turkish government launched the latest strikes in Syria and northern Iraq in response to a suicide bombing outside the interior ministry in Ankara last weekend. The bombing, which killed two assailants and wounded two police officers, was the first to have been claimed by the leftist PKK militants in the Turkish capital since 2016.
Without citing evidence, Turkey’s top diplomat Hakan Fidan alleged on Wednesday that the two attackers had trained in Syria. The Kurdish-led autonomous administration that governs northeast Syria flatly denied the allegation.
“We have always supported a peaceful resolution to the Kurdish-Turkish conflict in Turkey and continue to do so,” a senior Syrian Kurdish official tweeted on Wednesday. The US also considers the PKK to be a terrorist group but does not view its Syrian offshoot as such, a source of bitter complaint from Ankara.
Fidan — who until this past June oversaw Ankara’s steady campaign of drone assassinations of Syrian Kurdish officials as head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) – openly vowed on Wednesday that his government would target infrastructure and “energy facilities” deemed linked to the Kurdish factions in Syria and northern Iraq.
He also warned “third parties” — a veiled reference to US troops — to avoid what he described as “legitimate targets,” echoing previous warnings transmitted by Turkish diplomats to their US counterparts behind closed doors.
The Turkish military notified American counterparts ahead of this week’s bombardments in Iraq and Syria, a US military official told Al-Monitor.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Washington’s newly sworn-in top general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown, called their Turkish counterparts Yasar Guler and Armed Forces chief Metin Gurak in a bid to defuse tensions after the US Air Force shot down the Turkish drone on Thursday.
Austin “urged de-escalation in northern Syria and the importance of maintaining strict adherence to de-confliction protocols and communication through established military-to-military channels,” the Pentagon said in a readout of the call.
The Pentagon chief “acknowledged Turkey’s legitimate security concerns and affirmed his commitment to close coordination between the United States and Turkey to prevent any risk to US forces or the global coalition’s defeat-ISIS mission.”
A Turkish Defense Ministry readout of the call said that Austin and Guler discussed “the latest developments in Syria” and emphasized “the importance of close coordination of US and Turkish elements in the activities carried out in the region.”
“Turkey is ready for a joint fight with the USA against DAESH [IS],” Guler reportedly told Austin. Turkish officials have long insisted the US military work with Turkish-backed opposition fighters in Syria rather than the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a proposal widely deemed untenable in Washington.
Bombardment continues: Washington’s response appears to have done little if anything to halt Turkey’s continuing bombardment of infrastructure in the Kurdish-controlled enclave.
Turkish aircraft carried out strikes in Tel Rifaat, Derik and the wider Jazeerah region late on Thursday night, the defense ministry in Ankara said. Thirty targets were struck, including an oil well, a storage facility and warehouses “used by terrorists,” according to the statement.
Turkish media reported on Thursday evening that Turkish F-16s have begun carrying out strikes, suggesting a shift to manned aircraft capable of inflicting heavier damage. Local media in northeast Syria also reported artillery strikes in villages outside of the Kurdish-majority city of Kobani – the site of the pivotal 2014 battle where the Kurdish-led YPG, aided by other groups and US air support, turned the tide of IS’ genocidal conquest – and in the area of Ain Issa, the seat of the region’s Kurdish-led autonomous administration.
Kobani, Ain Issa and Tel Rifaat lie outside the US’ main zone of influence in Syria. But thus far US officials have given no indication that the military will act to defend civilian infrastructure from Turkey’s bombardment even within the American zone of influence.
“We do remain concerned about the potential impacts of military escalation in that region, inasmuch as it affects the civilian population and importantly, as it affects our ability to maintain focus on rooting out ISIS,” Ryder said Thursday.
Extent of the damage: Turkey’s latest round of bombing has hit electrical, water, oil and other facilities across the Kurdish-controlled zone, posing new threats to civilians who have struggled to rebuild in the wake of the war against the Islamic State.
Widespread power blackouts were reported near Qamishli, Tal Abyad, Amude and other areas, including in civilian hospitals, according to researchers at the northeast Syria-based Rojava Information Center. SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami said Thursday evening that at least nine people had been killed in the strikes.
“Poor security and humanitarian conditions; lack of economic opportunity – These are the fuel for the kind of desperation on which ISIS feeds and recruits,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in June as the Biden administraiton announced new humanitarian aid for areas liberated from from the jihadist group.
“We have to stay committed to our stabilization goals,” top diplomat Blinken said at the time.