Sanction Turkey for Sulaymaniyah strike – US analyst
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Turkey needs to be sanctioned for willfully endangering American lives during the failed Sulaymaniyah drone strike on April 7, Michael Rubin, a Middle East analyst for the American Enterprise Institute, said on Monday.
Rubin says US intelligence detected the drone and warned Turkey that Americans were present in the convoy, which also carried Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) Commander-in-Chief Mazloum Abdi, as well as counter-terrorism forces from Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. Turkey went ahead with the strike, which hit the ground three seconds after the convoy passed.
According to the US analyst, this was no warning shot: the missile was dampened by the muddy terrain, a result of earlier rainfall. Under different circumstances, he said, US personnel may have returned in body bags.
Rubin argued that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was willing to risk the backlash for killing NATO partner forces as presidential and parliamentary elections near on May 14. Polls show that Erdogan’s main opponent currently has a narrow lead on the president.
“Failure to react forcefully to a Turkish attack on American personnel at a civilian airfield undermines moral authority to respond to Iranians when they do the same thing,” says Rubin. Iranian-backed militias targeted US forces in Syria two weeks ago, killing an American contractor.
The US analyst says the Joe Biden administration needs to immediately sanction Bayraktar, a Turkish drone manufacturing company which builds the drones Ankara uses in Syria and Iraq. Additionally, the US government should “permanently shelve” F-16 fighter jet sales to Turkey, cease all intelligence sharing, sanction Turkey’s defense minister under the Magnitsky Act for targeting Kurds and Yezidis, and sanction and block Turkey’s intelligence chief from traveling to the US for his alleged cooperation with Iran and the Islamic State (ISIS).
According to Rubin, the SDF should also be outfitted with anti-aircraft weaponry and their own drones. “They are simply a better ally,” he says. Since 2015, the US and the SDF have engaged in a joint campaign against ISIS in north and east Syria.
Despite the crucial role played by the SDF, they have been repeatedly targeted by Turkish forces. Turkey mounted two invasions of Kurdish-held territory since 2018 and conducted hundreds of drone strikes on senior members. “To ignore the Turkish strike is to normalize it,” Rubin warns.