Pieces of an unmanned aircraft that were found in a fisherman’s net on the southern coast of Turkey have sparked a controversy as they might belong to a Heron, a trademark piece of equipment from the Israeli military. The event started speculation that Israel might be conducting surveillance missions over Turkey, which maintains a closed airspace to Israeli military planes.
Media reports on the discovery of debris from a UAS by fishermen fishing close to the southern coastline of Turkey’s Mersin province stirred controversy over the weekend as some media outlets reported that the pieces belonged to Israeli Herons. Turkey’s airspace is closed to the Israeli air force ever since the countries entered a bitter phase in their relations in the aftermath of last year’s bloody raid on a Gaza-bound humanitarian aid ship that claimed the lives of nine peace activists.
On the same night of the flotilla raid, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) assaulted the İskenderun Naval Base, where seven Turkish security personnel were killed. Turkish officials at the time reacted to the timing of the assaults as being “significant” in the sense that it might reveal cooperation between the PKK and Israel, the Cihan news agency reported on Saturday. More than a year after the assault, the piece of an UAV fueled allegations of such a cooperation and raised questions whether Herons may have actually gathered information on the İskenderun base and relayed it to the PKK to enable the attack, Cihan reported.
The piece from the aircraft was reportedly brought to the General Staff headquarters in Ankara for further investigation, as local authorities said they did not know for sure how the piece may have gotten to the Turkish shore. It is also speculated that the piece might have been carried by the waves across the Mediterranean before reaching the Turkish coast, but details on the exact location or time of the discovery remain unclear.
Source: Tactsrat