Episode Notes:

The U.S. Air Force shot down a Turkish drone over Syria, after it flew too close to a U.S. base. in the area The shootdown took place amid a wider Turkish offensive in the area, following a Kurdistan Workers' Party suicide attack in Ankara. To discuss the shootdown, Aaron Stein, chief content officer at War on the Rocks, joined the WarCast.

[:39] The reasons for Turkey's offensive in Syria

[2:02] The shoot down

[3:16] The aftermath

[6:18] U.S.-Turkish tensions

[9:23] Turkey's effort to push the U.S. military out of Syria

[11:57] Kicking the can down the road

Episode Transcript

Nicholas Danforth: My name is Nicholas Danforth and I'm an editor at War on the Rocks. You are listening to The Warcast, the members-only podcast for what you need to know now. On Thursday, US forces in Syria shot down a Turkish drone. Here to tell us why this happened, what it means for NATO and what it means for us Turkish relations, I'm joined by my colleague, Aaron Stein. Aaron, great to be here on the The Warcast with you.

Aaron Stein: Yeah. This should be fun, coming back to talk about what I used to do for a living.

Nicholas Danforth: I guess this is what we both used to do for a living before we started War on the Rocks. It was all Turkey all the time back in those days, and things haven't gotten any better since we stopped covering it.

Aaron Stein: Yeah. I mean, I guess, yesterday, we should just start at the beginning, is that a couple of days ago, I guess by the time this podcast comes out, almost a week ago on Sunday, there was a suicide bombing in Ankara right outside the Ministry of Interior. The suicide bombing was botched, but nevertheless was still carried out. The only person who died was the suicide bomber himself, and I believe his accomplice who died in the shootout with police. And the police that were guarding the exterior of the Ministry of Interior were injured. And in response to this, the Turkish government came out and said that basically in areas where they had been holding back in northern Syria, i.e, and targeting energy infrastructure, oil wells, would now be on the table, clearly signaling that they were going to do an air campaign.

And then I think in a bit of political gamesmanship to put pressure on the United States, with which they've had significant disagreements about Syria, basically since the Syrian conflict began. Is that third parties that are in the area, and there's only one, which is the United States, basically need to be put on warning that the Turkish air campaign will begin and that they can't necessarily guarantee the safety of forces. And I think that's the prelude to what happened with the shoot-down yesterday.

Nicholas Danforth: And then talk us through the shoot-down itself. Where was the Turkish drone? What was it doing and what happened to it?

Aaron Stein: This started to pop up all over Twitter, I guess yesterday, 8:30 AM East Coast Time. So, what had happened as part of the initial phase of the Turkish air campaign, which was at that time largely drones carrying out strikes on those energy infrastructure. So, it seemed like power stations, oil, I guess, pumping stations or oil refineries in this part of Syria. According to the US statements, and I don't think the Turks have contradicted this, is that the drone came within about 500 meters of a US position. I believe it was armed. And that after multiple warnings from the US through an established deconfliction line, the right to self-defense was triggered, i.e, that the US was concerned that perhaps this drone would strike the positions in which US forces were at.

I mean, the Turkish foreign minister had said as such a couple of days before. And that the drone was shot down by an F-16. Kicking off what I think has been a, thus far, relatively muted Turkish response, but nevertheless, significant event whenever you have one NATO member shooting at the other, triggering the right to self-defense, I think it's worthy of discussion.

Nicholas Danforth: So, let's have that discussion then. As far as the diplomatic response to all of this, for one thing that was striking, following this in the Turkish newspapers, there was, as you commented at the time, a very pronounced delay. We saw the same thing after the suicide bombing at the Ministry of the Interior. The Turkish papers at this point don't actually cover sensitive news stories immediately. They wait until they're told how to cover them by Erdoğan. And so, you saw this delay, presumably this was while the Turkish government figured out what its response was going to be on something that is clearly potentially inflammatory. What's been the diplomatic angle to this?

Aaron Stein: I mean, it's still unfolding, but thus far it was noteworthy that basically no Turkish newspaper was covering it at all. To the extent that it was being covered, it was being picked up in relatively minor outlets that were just repeating what people on Twitter were saying, which is that this Turkish drone, it's called an Anka, was shot down. It was probably shot down by the US coalition. And then ultimately, it was confirmed, I believe it was confirmed first by local sources. So, one assumes that Reuters was pulling from the Syrian Democratic forces, the Kurds that the US were embedded with, but then confirmed in The Wall Street Journal from US security officials. It was the US that came out and said it first in a press briefing. The press briefing was very carefully handled, called the incident regrettable, it is regrettable, and emphasizing that this shouldn't undermine the two countries' relationship.

And the Turkish response has been muted as well. The foreign ministry came out with a very mealy mouth statement this morning, saying that the drone was lost due to technical disagreements about the deconfliction arrangement, which I find to be a very euphemistic way to say it was shot down by Turkey's most important ally. And I think that this is indicative that the country didn't really know how to respond. It wasn't ready for a US response to its air campaign and hadn't planned it out. And I think there's another dynamic place here as well, in that the coordination or the deconfliction line between the two countries is military to military. It's the Ministry of Defense in Turkey to the Secretary of Defense in the US.

But the Turks have said that these drones are operated by the National Intelligence Service. And so, there's been reports, I think corroborated and said on the record by US officials, is that the drone was warned off multiple times. At one point left, and then came back and it was loitering uncomfortably close to US forces, is when the decision to use force was made. So, one does have to wonder if in Turkey, the left hand is talking to the right hand, and if this operation is stove piped in the Ministry of National Intelligence. The traditional ways that the two countries talk to each other broke down in some respects, which could also explain the slow diplomatic response on the Turkish side, i.e, left hand doesn't know what right hand does. And then they had to coordinate before it went up to Erdoğan, and then obviously Erdoğan had to then filter back down how the government would respond.

Nicholas Danforth: This raises a bigger question than in terms of Turkey's broader goals in doing all of this. This comes after Turkish drones struck very close to a vehicle transporting SDF Syrian Kurdish Commander Mazloum Abdi. Also when he was being escorted by US forces in Northern Iraq, it wasn't clear what exactly the Turkish drone was trying to do, whether it was trying to threaten US forces, whether they didn't know who was there. But it raises the bigger question of, especially in light of the remarks that you talked about before this current campaign kicked off, is there a concerted effort from Turkey to put pressure on the US military presence in Northern Syria through slow but noticeable escalations like this?

Aaron Stein: I think so. The incident you're talking about took place a couple months ago and the circumstances about it are still murky, but again, I like to say the action is not. There was a missile fired in the vicinity of US forces in Northern Iraq. And one has to presume that in the private military to military interactions between the two countries, there was a US warning to Turkey, "Don't do this again." And that's probably what made the US, in this case, the incident that happened yesterday, more willing to use force, rather than sit back passively because there had been a precedent set where a Turkish drone had fired at US forces. Whether intentionally or not, we still don't know. And I'm not sure anybody really knows what the actual intent there was.

But the broader question is the uncomfortable one, which is yes, I do believe Turkey is the main goal of this offensive, I guess we should call it, is to punish people under Kurdish rule in Northern Syria. They say that the goal is to go after the SDF, but the SDF obviously administers a large part. There are civilians that live in that place. And the infrastructure that's being hit, whether it's oil, whether it's energy, may be run by the SDF, but it pumps power, it pumps water into people who live in the area who have really no choice, the circumstances under which they're governed. And so, I think that's one.

But two, I think it's very notable that the Turks probably wouldn't do this in areas where the Russians are present. There's been some strikes around where there's some elements of the regime or the Russians, but the main focus has been in the place where the US is. And that's because that's where the Kurds are. And so, they're really trying to break US Kurdish relationship in Northeast Syria by making it extremely uncomfortable for the US to be there, so that the US leaves and so that they can then occupy more territory. And then they could have a stronger hand in potential negotiations with the regime or the Russians over what the future of Syria may look like. And that's really the subtext here. That's the uncomfortable point. And that's where they, I think, are probably going to succeed in raising questions in the US about how tenable the long-term US position is in Syria.

Nicholas Danforth: And I wanted to close out by asking you about that very briefly, because right, there clearly seems to be a belief in Turkey that the US military presence in Syria doesn't have the full backing of the United States, of the president. Going back to the Trump administration, you can see where Turkey is getting this. As a result in analyzing incidents like this, you've seen Turkish analysts try to play up the fact that this was some rogue action by CENTCOM that was done without the full backing of the United States. How much people believe in that specific conspiratorial version, who knows? But the belief to your point is very much that this is a soft spot. If they push on it hard enough, if they raise the stakes, if they actually enhance the degree of direct threat to US forces, that at some point that will trigger a political decision. Whereas it sort of almost kind of happened under the Trump administration, the US will turn around and abandon the Syrian Kurds.

Aaron Stein: I think that's the goal. And I think US actions are really revelatory here. The Turkish response thus far has basically been like, "Your shoot-down didn't stop us." And my response to that was the shoot-down wasn't meant to stop you. The shoot-down was meant to reinforce that it's the US that makes its own decisions about what aircraft can overfly ground positions. And clearly, they've made the decision that Turkish aircraft cannot overfly US positions. And I assume that that's been transmitted to the Turks as well. And so, in that sense, I think the US policy has succeeded, in that I don't think the Turks are going to overly US positions again. But more broadly, the Turks won't stop their offensive. And because they won't stop their offensive, that discomfort that you're talking about will continue to be punctuated. But this has been the debate in US policy circles basically since I've started doing this job.

So, I think 2015 is when I first had my first meeting with senior officials about the SDF and the US partnership. This was probably around the goal of Kobanî. The dynamics hasn't changed. And so, the terms of the US debate are, we can keep kicking this can down the road. Turkey can be managed. Yes, things will get hot for a little while, but eventually they'll stop bombing and then we can continue our small presence, because that presence is important to us in the war against ISIS, the Islamic State. But we'll see. Maybe this time will change. Maybe there'll be a determination that ISIS is defeated and that the US will come home. The loser will, of course, always be the Kurds. But I think the Kurds know that deep down, even if they're unhappy with it.

Nicholas Danforth: And I will say as someone who wrote almost a decade ago now about the fundamental contradictions in US policy that you're pointing out, we've succeeded in kicking the can down the road for the better part of a decade now. And to your point, that doesn't mean we're going to be able to continue to do it, but we've done it a lot longer than I thought was going to be possible.

Aaron Stein: Me too. And I know we're running out of time here, but the kick the can down the road strategy is probably where we'll end up. But that tension, i.e, that the US is embedded with the group Turkey doesn't like and is willing to shoot at will persist going forward.

Nicholas Danforth: Thank you for joining us on The Warcast.

Aaron Stein: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.