Jean Marcou, Professor of Law at Sciences Po Grenoble, researcher at CERDAP2 and associate researcher at the French Institute of Anatolian Studies in Istanbul.
After the idealism of Ahmet Davutoğlu's diplomacy and the soft power conveyed by Turkish TV series now banned in parts of the Arab world, Ankara has in recent years become Ankara has distinguished itself in recent years by its increasingly frequent use of hard power. power, with no fewer than four military interventions in Syria policy in the Eastern Mediterranean to interfere in the great gas game the great gas game taking place there, and the deployment of mercenaries in Libya and the Caucasus. or in the Caucasus. At the heart of these recent military operations is the emblematic and systematic use of drones. systematic use of drones has revealed not only Turkey's mastery of this technology of this technology, but also the decisive role it could play in new in new conflicts.
In May-June 2021, in Libya, the use of this new equipment effectively reversed the the Tripoli government (GNA - Government of National Alliance), which was government (GNA - Government of the National Alliance), which only a few weeks earlier had been against General Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA), despite the Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA), despite being equipped with the Russian Pantsir short-range anti-aircraft system. The success of the drones thus helped amplify the effects of Turkey's new Turkey's new offensive diplomacy in and around the Middle East, whether admired admired or feared.
The use of Turkish drones reveals new trends in modern warfare
Turkish leaders and media (especially the most pro-government the most pro-government press) have made much of the role played by drones, particularly role played by drones, particularly in May 2021, when the GNA recaptured s recapture of the al-Watiya base east of Tripoli. But the phenomenon has not escaped to many foreign observers and officials. As early as 2019, the Israeli specialized the importance of Turkish drones in Libya, where they had already been where they had already been deployed. And since the same period, the American group group Bloomberg has continued to devote studies to Turkey's use of drones the emergence of a "new drone war " and Turkey's the emergence of a " new drone war" and the weapon's potential to change the configuration of contemporary conflicts. In mid-July 2020, shortly after the episode of the Turkish counter-offensive against the NLA in Libya, the British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, speakingat the Air and Space at theUK 's Air and Space Power Conference, insisted on the the proven effectiveness of Turkish drones in Libya and Syria. He declared We need to learn from others. Look at how Turkey has operated in Libya using its Bayraktar TB-2 drones, since mid-2019 (...) or observe Turkey's involvement in Syria and its use of electronic warfare use of electronic warfare, lightly armed drones and intelligent munitions to neutralize tanks, armored vehicles and air defense systems. air defense systems."
More recently, at the beginning of April 2021, in an article with the significant title, "Droning on in the Middle East", Francis Fukuyama highlighted the case of Turkey to show how drones are likely to be a game-changer in contemporary contemporary conflicts. The renowned Johns-Hopkins University professor was clearly impressed by the devastating attack carried out in March 2020, by Ankara's drones against the Syrian army in retaliation for a Russian Russian strike that had just killed more than thirty Turkish soldiers in the Idlib enclave. Videos show how a hundred armored vehicles and multiple multiple installations were easily annihilated by these "inexpensive" unmanned unmanned aerial vehicles, "inexpensive" and ultimately "not so difficult to manufactured". A comparable but even more destructive scenario occurred autumn of 2020, during the second Nagorno-Karabakh war, when Azerbaijan Azerbaijan won the war, in particular through the immoderate use of Turkish and Israeli drones. According to Fukuyama, this new weapon is in the process of the primacy of tanks on the battlefield, and in this case, it has also it has also enabled Turkey "to establish itself as a regional power in the in the year 2020" through calibrated interventions, enabling it to to influence the outcome of three different conflicts in its immediate while retaining room for manoeuvre in the contradictory relations with its Russian neighbor or its American ally. ally.
How and why has Turkey become a drone producer?
At the start of the 21st century, the Turkish army began using drones in its fight against the Kurdish PKK guerrillas, initially for observation purposes. Faced with American reluctance to supply this cutting-edge equipment, Ankara turned to turned to Israel, the other major historical producer of this equipment, which for its part, among other things, against the Palestinians. Turkey, which good relations with the Hebrew state, purchased Israeli Heron which it soon upgraded, at lower cost, with locally produced with optical equipment produced locally by the ASELSAN company. However, by the end of the first decade of the new millennium, relations with Israel deteriorated, creating uncertainty uncertainty over the continuation of Turkish supplies of Israeli drones. drones .
Turkey will be able to rapidly manufacture its own UAVs. Having a bitter memory of the embargo imposed on it after its intervention in Cyprus after its intervention in Cyprus in 1974, Turkey has been developing, for several decades now, a major national arms industry modelled on the Hebrew state, also concerned about its independence in this area. It has a number of a number of specialized companies that work with university research centres and produce a wide range of original or licensed weapons (assembly of American F-16 fighters or European Eurocopter A532 helicopters, production of the locally-madeAltay tank, armored armored vehicles and assault rifles). This tried-and-tested system enables us to the company's policy of systematically succeeding in producing its own arms that it had previously had to import. Domestic production production of drones, at a time when Ankara is joining the select club of countries club of countries capable of producing and exporting their own warships warships ( MILGEM frigate program, Anadolu aircraft carrier), nevertheless reflects the image of an increasingly efficient military industry, which relies in particular on intense research activity.
The advent of the 2002 of the AKP government further increased the scale of this phenomenon. With Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the indigenous indigenous production of high-tech armaments is at the heart of an increasingly offensive increasingly offensive diplomatic equation. The Turkish Presidency of defense industries (see official website : SSB, Savunma Sanayii Başkanlığı) is constantly issuing invitations to tender for the production of equipment equipment that few countries have yet mastered, to such an extent that Turkey technology, to such an extent that Turkey is now at the head of a diversified diversified drone industry, both public and private.
Produced by Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), the Anka is the first Turkish drone, tested in 2010 and marketed in 2012. Originally an observation drone, its specificity lies in the fact that it is the result of an assembly of exclusively local components. Since 2018, new armed versions have been available, in particular the Anka S. At the same time, drone design and production is also a family affair in Turkey, as its private side depends on Kale-Baykar, a consortium set up by Selçuk Bayraktar, the husband of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's youngest daughter (Sümeyye). Over the past decade, this engineer (trained at Istanbul Technical University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachussetts Institute of Technology) has convinced Turkey's leaders of the effectiveness of this new weapon, producing the TB1 as early as 2009, but above all releasing the combat drone, Bayraktar TB2, from 2014 onwards, which made a name for itself in the Syrian, Libyan and Caucasian theaters of operations in 2020.
Drones as indicators of new postures in Turkish diplomacy
Despite Fukuyama's theses (which we've learned to distrust), it's not a given that drones today threaten to consign armored weapons to the dustbin of history, just as aircraft carriers obliterated battleships during the Pacific War. These new weapons have certainly proved their effectiveness in asymmetrical conflicts (Kurdish guerrilla warfare), to detect and neutralize unconventional forces taking advantage of the terrain, and even in more traditional conflicts where the adversary had traditional ground weaponry (artillery, armor, etc.), sometimes in sufficient numbers, but not always sufficiently protected electronically (Syria, Libya, Nagorno-Karabakh, etc.).
Moreover, drone production leaves Turkey with the problem of acquiring a new, high-performance fighter to replace its ageing fleet of F-16s, as its orders for the new American F-35 aircraft have been blocked since it acquired Russian S-400 air defense missiles. Nevertheless, the repeated and sometimes spectacular successes of its drones over the past year in a number of conflicts, where their involvement has proved decisive, have undeniably given Turkey a reputation in this field, from which it is also trying to reap the rewards on the diplomatic front; as one of the most immediate examples in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean shows.
In mid-March, we learned, not without surprise Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that Saudi Arabia was seriously interested in Turkish in Turkish drones, despite the fact that relations between the two relations between the two countries have been difficult for several years, and have even periods of extreme tension, when in 2017 Ankara supported Qatar, which was facing an embargo against it by Riyadh and its allies, or, in 2018, when dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. It's true that since the beginning of 2021, the lines have been moving in the Middle East. At the end of February 2021, the embargo embargo on Doha was lifted, and shortly afterwards, in early March 2021, Ankara announced its intention to renew ties with Egyptian rival in a move an attempt to unravel the ties that Athens has patiently patiently forged in recent years with the conservative Sunni Arab country to isolate its Turkish neighbor in the Middle East. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan admittedly considered Saudi Arabia's request Saudi Arabia's request was somewhat "confusing", while expressing surprise that Riyadh that Riyadh could organize joint air maneuvers with Greece at the same time. but it seems that the matter had been pending since 2017, and that Turkey Turkey has removed the last obstacles to its conclusion, using the levers levers available to it. Two Saudi companies to manufacture a drone under license (the Karayel-SU) with the Turkish company Vestel Savunma.
Drones in Dombass, a new example of fragile Russian-Turkish relations relations
Further north, Turkish drones acquired by Ukraine Ukraine are at the heart of what could turn out to be a much more important important. In mid-April 2021, Ukraine deployed Bayraktar TB2 drones in Dombass, its easternmost region, where its sovereignty has been disputed since 2014 by Moscow-backed Russian-speaking separatists. The news was all the more sensational given that the effectiveness of this weapon last year in Libya, at the expense of the Russian Pantsir system. Above all, it comes at a time when Russian-Turkish relations relations look increasingly uncertain. Despite the Astana process (convergence on the settlement of the Syrian conflict between Russia Iran and Turkey, although they support different belligerents), the situation in the situation in the Idlib enclave, which had already provoked a crisis between Ankara and Moscow in early 2020, is still unresolved. And if, in autumn 2020, the two countries agreed to co-manage the exit from the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, Turkey's involvement in it, alongside Baku with Baku, notably through the supply of drones, has been tolerated rather than approved by Russia. approved by Russia.
Thus, in the context of this ambiguous with Moscow, the use or supply of drones becomes an argument that Ankara that Ankara is extending to take advantage of. What's more, with Ukraine, it's no longer simply a question of delivery or licensed production, but a collaboration to jointly create new , more powerful new, more efficient UAVs, since Kiev has the capacity to produce some of their components Kiev's potential know-how in the production of certain components (notably engines) former USSR. The announcement of new purchases of Turkish equipment equipment (UAVs and corvettes) corvettes) last December, followed by confirmation of this military cooperation and Ankara's rejection of Russia's annexation of Crimea, during the visit Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's visit to Turkey on April 10, 2021, However, Vladimir Putin's patience seems to be wearing thin. In mid-April 2021, using the worsening health crisis as a pretext, Russia suspended its air links with Turkey for a month and a half with Turkey, a decision with far-reaching consequences for a country plunged into an unprecedented unprecedented financial crisis, where Russians make up the largest tourist contingent (7 million tourists in 2019).
So it remains to be seen whether Turkish-Ukrainian Turkish-Ukrainian drone cooperation and the Russian reaction it provokes illustrate, as in the previous Saudi example, a significant evolution in Turkish Turkish diplomacy, which could indicate that Ankara is in the process of challenging the strong convergence it has often displayed with its Russian neighbor, to its Western allies. Turkish support for Kiev's bid to join which Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ostensibly reaffirmed when he recently welcomed when he recently welcomed his Ukrainian counterpart, is a further indication that this to wonder whether this process has not already begun in the Black Sea. Black Sea.