Around 3:30 p.m. on Aug. 31, a group of villagers were hit by fire from a Bayraktar TB2 tactical armed drone in a picnic area about 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the border city of Hakkari, a frequent scene of terror operations.
Mehmet Temel, a 35-year-old father of four children, who had no involvement in any terror activity and who did not have a criminal record, was killed and three others were wounded. Those wounded were later detained by security forces on charges of collaboration with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The incident, first reported by Amberin Zaman on Sept. 6, has since become a major agenda item.
A deeper analysis of the issue is necessary as the Turkey-PKK clashes have been rapidly becoming drone-centric. It didn’t attract much attention in the media, but at the end of August the PKK attacked a Turkish army military outpost near Semdinli with an off-the-shelf drone carrying an explosive modified from an AGS-17 grenade launcher round and wounded two Turkish soldiers in the first PKK drone attack in the 40 years of clashes.
On Sept. 8, 2016, Turkey introduced the Bayraktar TB2 tactical drone armed with MAM-L (smart micro munition with a modified UMTAS missile, with a range of 8 kilometers [5 miles]) in counterterror operations against the PKK. Security sources in Ankara told Al-Monitor that since September 2016, about 2,000 PKK militants have been neutralized, about 600 of them (30%) by armed drones. Recently, Turkish media widely reported that armed drones neutralized 61 PKK militants just in the previous month. The Daily Sabah said 21 senior leaders of the organization were killed by armed drones in the past year.
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