A Bayraktar Akıncı combat drone. Source: the Turkish Ministry of National Defense.
On August 18, a Turkish combat drone carried out an airstrike on a position of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) inside Menagh Air Base in the northern countryside of Syria’s Aleppo.
The air base fell into the hands of ISIS in 2013. Three years later, it was captured by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, the core unit of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). In 2018, the SAA returned to the base under an agreement with the SDF.
According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Turkish drone strike didn’t result in any casualties or material losses.
The Turkish military intensified its attacks on SAA positions in SDF-held areas in northern and northeastern Syria in the recent days. On August 16, a series of Turkish airstrikes that targeted the outskirts of the town of Kobane in the northeastern Aleppo countryside killed three Syrian soldiers and wounded six others. A day later, the death toll from the airstrikes rose to four when a wounded soldier died.
Turkey is apparently trying to intimidate the SAA. In the last two months, the army stepped up its presence in SDF territory to prevent the Turkish military and its proxy from launching a new operation against the group.
Despite of these attacks, in the recent weeks, top officials in Ankara, including President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, called for rapprochement with the Damascus government.
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