Category: 2021

Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu criticized French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent remarks on Turkey and Algeria, as he slammed the French leader for adopting populist rhetoric ahead of elections.

“We have seen time and again that such cheap approaches do not benefit anyone in elections,” Çavuşoğlu said in a joint news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart in Ankara.

He continued by saying that it is extremely wrong for Macron to try to pull Turkey, which has no involvement in colonialism, into such debates.

Last week, Macron added more fuel to the fire through a series of controversial remarks over the political situation in Algiers, minimizing his country’s role in brutal colonization of the country and attempts to rewrite history.

He accused the country of “disinformation” and “propaganda” that apparently worked for Algerians.

“I am fascinated to see Turkey’s ability to make people completely forget the role it has played in Algeria and the domination it has exercised, and to explain that we are the only colonizers, that’s great. Algerians believe in it,” Macron quipped.

Throughout their 300 years of influence in Algeria, Ottoman Turks greatly shaped Algerian society and culture.

Following decades of French support for Armenian claims and recognition of 1915 events as “genocide,” Turkey became more vocal about the French humanitarian record in history, accusing Paris of genocidal acts throughout its colonial rule.

Ankara and Paris are at odds over a number of issues, including Libya and Syria, French backing of initiatives targeting Turkey in the Mediterranean, active French support for Greece and the Greek Cypriot administration and Macron’s policies that have received criticism as being Islamophobic.

The editor-in-chief of the Russian state TV channel RT said Russia should annex eastern Turkey’s Mount Ağrı (Ararat) and Kars province.

Margarita Simonyan, who is of Armenian descent, told public broadcaster Rossiya 1 TV channel that the country should annex the areas from Turkey.

Simonyan’s controversial comments followed similar remarks by Russian politician and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Vladimir Zhirinovsky, who claimed that a “special” tsar-like regime was necessary to secure Armenia.

“Any democratic regime like the U.S., U.K. or France is unacceptable (for Russia). And you, Armenians, will get both Kars and Ardahan if there’s a strict regime like (the rule under) a tsar. Under a democratic government, even Yerevan will be taken away from you,” he said.

Armenia and Turkey have never established diplomatic relations and their shared border has been closed since the 1990s.

The ties have further deteriorated due to Turkey’s support for its regional ally Azerbaijan, which fought with Armenia last year for control of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.

But last month, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said Yerevan was prepared to hold discussions on repairing relations with Ankara.

Meanwhile, Turkey and Russia enjoy strong relations, as officials highlight cooperation on numerous regional issues. In July, Dmitry Polyanskiy, the first deputy permanent representative of Russia to the United Nations, said Turkey is working to preserve world peace in crisis areas including Libya, Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh.

A Russian-brokered deal on Nov. 10 halted a six-week conflict between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh and its surrounding areas, securing territorial gains for Azerbaijan. Turkey agreed with Russia that its troops would also monitor the cease-fire. Ankara and Moscow signed an agreement to establish a joint observation center in Nagorno-Karabakh.

On the other side, Turkey has frequently voiced that the two countries have made significant contributions to the establishment of cease-fires in both Syria and Libya, while further steps need to be taken in Libya to reintegrate the country’s divided institutions.

The Turkish drone magnate Baykar will be establishing joint training and maintenance centers for Turkish armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in Ukraine, a statement on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s website said.

“We have been waiting for this moment for a long time. This is an important event for us,” Zelenskyy said after the signing of the memorandum with Baykar on Wednesday.

The memorandum was a step toward joint Ukrainian-Turkish production of the drones, the statement said.

Ukraine has previously bought the landmark drones from Baykar to bolster its armed forces in their fight against Russian-backed separatists in the war in the eastern Donbass region.

Kyiv plans to procure 24 more Bayraktar TB2s in the coming period, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Lieutenant-General Valeriy Zaluzhny, who very recently assumed the role, said earlier this month.

Baykar has also sold its armed drones to Qatar, Azerbaijan and Poland. In May, Poland became the first European Union and NATO member state to acquire UAVs from Turkey.

Interest remains high. Saudi Arabia is also said to have been interested in buying Turkish drones. Latvia also hinted that it could be the second European Union and NATO member state to acquire the UAVs. Albania is also interested in striking a deal to procure Bayraktar TB2s.

The Bayraktar TB2 earned worldwide fame following its deployment in Syria, Libya and Azerbaijan, paving the way for more export deals.

The drones had devastated Bashar Assad regime ground forces during clashes in Idlib province in February-March 2020.

They also gave decisive air support to Turkey’s ally in Libya and successfully guided airstrikes that assassinated senior leaders of the PKK terrorist group over the last two years.

Agroup of Turkish defense contractors is testing a kamikaze unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that will be used to counter and neutralize other drone-borne threats.

The UAV is part of a wide range of drone detection and destruction systems developed by Havelsan and Transvaro, exhibited at the 3rd Military Radar and Border Security Summit, organized by the Independent Industrialists and Businesspersons Association (MÜSIAD) in Ankara.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA) at the summit, Havelsan Command Control Defense Technologies Business Development Manager Nezih Şişman said the threat posed by low-cost drones or UAVs is increasing by the day.

He noted that there are other stand-alone solutions, produced by different companies that can detect, diagnose and prevent threats using complex algorithms.

Şişman said they are looking to develop a system that can protect large campuses, critical facilities or infrastructures, organizations with scattered forces, like the gendarmerie, as well as critical locations like Ankara that is home to many important institutions.

He added that they took the vast STAR Refinery complex in western Izmir’s Aliağa as a prototype and started integration studies with its stakeholders for some defense plans.

The Havelsan official said they are creating an entire system by adding different algorithms to the Havelsan systems and integrating different components like radar, electro-optical suites, mixing devices and RF (Radio Frequency) detectors.

“At the end of the day, we attempting something that has not been done before in Turkey,” he said.

“We offer an artificial intelligence (AI) supported system that will utilize algorithms to detect, diagnose, analyze and eliminate a threat using the appropriate weapon. It will be able to do so thanks to software with a network-supported command and control system at its center, as well as software that can integrate different systems, weapons and sensors, provided that it is independent of the manufacturer,” he explained.

He added that the project’s stakeholder company is responsible for the drone detection radar, its electro-optical suite, control consoles, the ability to detect threats and use related fusion algorithms. Şişman said Havelsan removed the intermediate stages and moved such components to an integrated system.

Explaining how the system operates he said: “When a UAV approaches, our radar detects it and warns the electro-optical suite. The electro-optical suite locks and starts to follow the target. Meanwhile, our command-and-control system provides situational awareness to the user by taking images of the target and the electro-optical system. At this point, the system’s new member, a kamikaze UAV solution called Fedai (Bodyguard) is put on alert. Developed by our partner company Transvaro Fedai has already been tested. After the detections, the intercept geometry is calculated by the command-and-control software and the kamikaze UAV is launched to counter the threat.”

The kamikaze drone, Şişman added, “uses a certain target and identification information. It flies for a while and begins by visually scanning its target. As soon as it captures its target from a certain distance, which is 40 meters at the moment, it can destroy a single UAV or a swarm of UAVs at its location by detonating the warhead.”

He pointed out that solutions like signal jamming are also used against the drone threat. Şişman said when different methods and hybrid applications are used, jamming devices can become ineffective and in this case, it is possible to use the kamikaze UAV Fedai.

He noted that in the next one or two months, the company will demonstrate the capabilities of the entire system, from detection to destruction within a scenario, including destroying a UAV in the air by launching Fedai.

He said the system has an open architecture and the safe area it will provide will expand depending on the number of sensors and weapons are integrated.

Şişman added that by spreading different components like radar and electro-optical suite in a distributed architecture, they will achieve a system that can be controlled from a single center in a large area.