26 THENEWYORKER,M AY16, 2022
expert Uzi Rubin wrote, after review-
ing Azerbaijani footage of precision air
strikes. “Some were seen being destroyed
with their radar antennas still rotating,
searching in vain for targets.” The Azer-
baijanis also deliberately triggered
enemy radar by flying unmanned crop
dusters at Armenian positions. If the
Armenian missile launchers took the
bait, revealing their location, they were
destroyed by TB2s.
Turkey and Azerbaijan share close
linguistic and political ties, but the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict represented
a new level of coöperation. “There’s such
cultural affinity between the Azerbai-
janis and the Anatolian Turks—they
say, ‘One nation, two states,’” Outzen,
the former State Department special-
ist, told me. “Now they’re starting to
say, ‘One nation, two states, one army.’”
This is bad news for Armenia, which
is wedged between the two. Turkey has
not acknowledged its role in the Arme-
nian genocide of 1915, and the Azerbai-
jani President, Aliyev, has referred to
Armenia as “a territory artificially cre-
ated on ancient Azerbaijani lands.”
Such claims have led the influential
Armenian diaspora to block Western
components from being used in Bayrak-
tar’s drones, through both congressio-
nal action in the U.S. and pressure on
manufacturers. But an analysis of a
downed TB2 in Nagorno-Karabakh
revealed that the aircraft was using a
G.P.S. transponder made by the Swiss
manufacturer Garmin. The company
issued a statement saying that it had
no supply relationship with Baykar, and
that the transponder was commercially
available. Nevertheless, Bayraktar has
sought to reduce his reliance on West-
ern components; in a recent Instagram
post, he claimed that ninety-three per
cent of the TB2’s components were
now manufactured in Turkey. Bayrak-
tar’s development cycle has a D.I.Y. el-
ement that can make the Pentagon’s
practices seem out of date. “Our ser-
vices are so culturally tied to a cum-
bersome acquisition process,” Andy
Milburn, a senior fellow at the Mid-
dle East Institute, told me. “What he’s
doing is so modular, so replaceable.”
Feron, Bayraktar’s graduate adviser, re-
called the aftermarket modifications
that Bayraktar made to store-bought
drones. “Sometimes in the aerospace
industry they do a lot of simulations,
but they never touch the machine,”
Feron said. “He’s much more of a
builder.”L
ast October, Ukraine announced
that it was constructing a factory
outside Kyiv to assemble Bayraktar’s
drones. Shortly afterward, Ukraine re-
leased video of a TB2 conducting a strike
against an artillery position in the con-
tested eastern region of Donbas. The
Air Force colonel who runs Ukraine’s
drone program has not revealed his iden-
tity, citing security concerns, but in 2019
he travelled to Baykar’s facility in west-
ern Turkey for three months of training.
“I loved it there,” he told Al-Monitor,
an online newsletter.
“The acquisition of certain systems—
like the TB2 and the American Jave-
lin anti-tank missile—may actually fur-
ther incentivize a Russian invasion
instead of deterring one,” the military
analyst Aaron Stein wrote in a prescient
blog post in December. In February,
Russia invaded.
The early days of the war looked like
a repeat of Nagorno-Karabakh. Pub-
licly available footage suggests that TB2s
destroyed at least ten Russian missile
batteries and disrupted the Russian sup-
ply lines by bombing transport trucks.
In the past few weeks, though, the re-
lease of strike videos has slowed. This
may be due to security concerns, but
it’s also possible that the Russians have
caught up—the TB2 has no real de-
fense against a fighter jet, and in the
lead-up to the invasion the Russian mil-
itary trained against the drones. In early
March, Ukrainian officials announced
that they were receiving another ship-
ment from Baykar; by the end of the
month, a tally of press releases showed
that Russia claimed to have shot down
thirty-nine TB2s, which would likely
constitute the bulk of the Ukrainian
fleet. Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr
Zelensky, was initially enthusiastic about
the TB2, but in April, at a press con-
ference in a Kyiv subway station, he
downplayed the aircraft’s importance.
“With all due respect to Bayraktar, and
to any hardware, I will tell you, frankly,
this is a different war,” he said. “Drones
may help, but they will not make the
difference.” Still, a couple of weeks be-
fore, Alexey Yerkhov, the Russian Am-bassador to Turkey, had complained
about the sale. “Explanations like ‘busi-
ness is business’ won’t work, since your
drones are killing our soldiers,” Yerkhov
said, in remarks addressed to the Turk-
ish government.
In our conversation, Bayraktar con-
demned Russia’s actions but declined
to discuss operational specifics. “Let’s
not put any of these countries at risk,”
he said. “If any poor Ukrainian was
hurt, I would be very sad. I would be
responsible on the day of judgment.”
Bayraktar’s software upgrades respond
to customer feedback, and his designs
continue to evolve. His latest produc-
tion drone, the twin-prop Akinci, can
fly to forty thousand feet and can be
equipped with jamming countermea-
sures. In March, he tweeted a picture
of the prototype for Baykar’s first jet,
the Kizilelma, which resembles an au-
tonomous F-16 without a cockpit. (In
addition to the military vehicles, there
is also the Cezeri, a human-size quad-
copter, which Bayraktar has termed a
“flying car.”)
Bayraktar is also investing in auton-
omy, and told me that he was ahead of
the competition in this area. “That’s
what our expertise is,” he said. “Push a
button, and the aircraft lands.” An au-
tonomous drone might find its way home
if its communication links were severed.
To develop such systems, Bayraktar will
need to retain programming talent, but
Erdoğan’s regime is struggling against
brain drain. “I, personally, know a whole
bunch of people who have left,” Cagap-
tay said. “In Turkey, they don’t see a fu-
ture for themselves.”
“Sometimes oppression is worse than
death,” Bayraktar told me. He was re-
ferring to Ukraine’s efforts to defend
itself against the Russian invasion, but,
a month after we talked, the Turkish
civil-rights campaigner Osman Kavala
was sentenced to life in prison, after a
politically motivated trial that Amnesty
International called a “travesty of jus-
tice.” On May 1st, the Ukrainian de-
fense ministry resumed releasing foot-
age from Bayraktar’s drones, showing
them striking a pair of Russian patrol
boats. Another video released that day
showed Ukrainian soldiers, against a
backdrop of destroyed Russian vehicles,
dancing, laughing, and singing Bayrak-
tar’s name.