Deadly, armed drones, which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is supplying in great numbers to Azerbaijan, are playing an increasingly prominent role in Azerbaijan’s invasion of the Armenian ethnic enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. This conflict could get out of control.
Turkey is producing these drones at the Baykar factory in Turkey. This company is owned by the Bayraktar family, one of whose leaders is Selcuk Bayratkar; Selcuk just happens to be married to Erdogan’s daughter Sumeyye, making this an Erdogan family affair.
Azerbaijan is heavily deploying these drones because after Azerbaijan launched its military offensive on Sept. 27, its forces found the terrain difficult to advance in, and got bogged down. The guided drones fly above that. The inhabitants of Martuni, which is near Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital of Stepanakert, reported to the October 8 Financial Times that all one hears is hissing, and then boom — a house, a car, a military vehicle, or a civilian is blown up. The Turks, in addition to producing their own drones, purchased $5 billion of Israeli drones over the past 4 years.
The Armenians do not have a fully effective defense against the drones. An exultant Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, told the Los Angeles Times Oct. 15, “These drones show Turkey’s strength. It also empowers us.” This has led Aliyev to indicate that he believes his nation can win a military victory.
The Turks are attempting to advance wars by booby-trapping Southwest Asia with drones. The October 8 Financial Times reported, “Nagorno-Karabakh is the fifth foreign conflict zone where Turkish drones have been deployed in recent years, with the country’s unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) also taking to the skies in Syria, Libya, northern Iraq and the eastern Mediterranean, where Turkey and Greece are at loggerheads over maritime rights.”
