Another Turkish drone has been shot down by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), adding to expectations of significant changes in a war which has for years been characterised by the Turkish Armed Forces (TAF)’s ability to use unmanned drones to inflict significant casualties against its opponents while conducting massacres amounting to warcrimes. Turkish authorities have not confirmed the incident.
“On June 6, at around 23:00, the ANKA type unmanned aerial vehicle belonging to the Turkish state was shot down by our guerrilla forces,” the armed wing of the PKK said in their statement, alongside footage of the shoot-down. The news follows the PKK’s announcement, earlier this year, that it had achieved unprecedented success in neutralising Turkish-made unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, which have been a critical component of Turkish military operations.
That initial announcement highlighted a significant setback for the Turkish military, reporting the downing of 15 Turkish-made drones in various engagements in Iraqi Kurdistan and northern Syria since February 2023, including models such as the Bayraktar TB2, AKSUNGUR, AKINCI, and the ANKA drone which was targeted in the latest footage. In previous statements, the PKK have emphasised the strategic importance of this new-found capability, suggesting that it could change the balance of power in its ongoing conflict with Turkish forces.
The newly-claimed ability is particularly significant, Turkish drones have been implicated in a range of alleged war crimes including airstrikes targeting and killing Kurdish civilians in the course of their operations against the PKK in northern Iraq, a campaign which has been marked by accusations of multiple violations of military and humanitarian law levelled at the Turkish forces which now occupy swathes of northern Iraq. Turkish drones have also been used in massacres of Kurdish and other civilians in North and East Syria.
Journalists, observers and legal experts have long argued that “Turkey’s drone warfare is a flagrant violation of international law, most obviously of the strict rules on the use of force and self-defence… principles and customs of war…, and basic human rights… in that it attacks individuals and groups of people without sufficiently determining their status, or even pretending to try. These crimes are blatant violations of basic human rights and war amendments of international law.”
Nor are the deadly drone strikes limited to Kurdistan. Deadly Turkish drone technology has been exported to battlefields in Ukraine, Yemen, Libya and worldwide. In January 2022, photographs of missile fragments provided material evidence that Ethiopia used a Turkish drone in an attack that killed 58 civilians sheltering in a school. In Kaduna, Nigeria over 100 civilians died in a 2023 drone strike by the Nigerian Army, using a recently acquired Turkish drone. Likewise, the 2024 killing of 23 civilians in military strikes conducted by Turkish-made drones in Somalia may account to war crimes, Amnesty International has said, pointing to the potential direct involvement of Turkish experts. Turkey’s drone warfare has thus not only been implicated in war crimes across multiple continents, but contributed to a profound reshaping of the nature of warfare.
As such, it’s possible the PKK’s latest announcement could contribute to a broader shift in the nature of warfare in the Middle East and beyond, as the advantage brought to Turkey by its deadly drone warfare is partially diminished.
