Turkish drones downed one after another

Sara Wahid

The shooting down of Turkish drones in a number of countries is exposing the failures of Turkish military industries and depriving Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, of the opportunity to brag about these industries.

On March 2, Turkey deployed its drones in preparation for attacking Syrian army troops, according to Bloomberg.

The agency quoted an unnamed Turkish military official as saying that the drones are a reflection of the progress Turkish military industries had reached.

Ankara, he added, used the drones to avenge the killing of 33 Turkish troops in Syria.

However, the downing of the same drones by the Syrian army later showed the bragging of Turkish officials about the presumed progress of military industries in Turkey to be empty.

On March 3, the Syrian army shot down one of these drones and published photos of the debris of the drone.

Two days earlier, the official Syrian news agency, SANA, reported the downing of an unmanned Turkish aerial vehicle over the countryside of the eastern city of Idlib.

Utter failure in Libya

Turkish military technologies also received a painful blow in Libya. The Libyan National Army (LNA) shot down a large number of Turkish drones, including most recently on March 14. The LNA said its ground defenses succeeded in downing a Turkish drone over a military base in Jufra in central Libya.

The downing of this drone was the latest in a series of setbacks suffered by Turkey in Libya.

Media war

The downing of the Turkish drones sparked a media war between Turkey and Iran, especially after Iranian media published reports about this.

This caused Turkey to be angry. Turkish media started reacting to the Iranian media reports.

The official Turkish news agency, Annadolu, countered the Iranian media reports by saying that the Turkish government does not hide its losses.

Turkey, it added, declares its losses in a transparent manner.