27 April 2022

Has Turkey become an armed drone superpower?

James Jeffrey

Once better known for its distinctive style of making potent coffee and its gelatinous confectionary cubes called Turkish Delight, these days Turkey is making a name for itself through a more deadly means: as a major global player in armed drone development.

I first got an inkling of this after Tigrayan forces in Ethiopia’s dreadfully drawn-out civil conflict mounted an astonishing counterattack southward through enemy territory that left them positioned to take the capital and topple the Ethiopian government. It had seemed it really could be over for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who called on the capital’s civilians to arm and ready themselves for a last-ditch defence. But suddenly the Tigrayan forces withdrew all the way back north, from whence they had attacked so decisively.

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