Bayraktar means “flag bearer” in Turkish, but it is also the surname of the son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Selçuk Bayraktar, whose company produces, first for the Turkish army, then for export, increasingly formidable drones. The Bayraktar TB2, tested from 2014, can fly for more than a day straight, within a radius of 150 kilometers, with the necessary electronics to hit its target day or night.
This drone made it possible, once Turkey was engaged alongside the internationally recognized government in Libya, to destroy the anti-aircraft batteries of the opposing camp, in the spring of 2020, contributing to the stampede of Russian mercenaries from the Wagner group. A few months later, it was Azerbaijan that took advantage of the effectiveness of the TB2 to force Armenia to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh. Turkish drones are highlighted during the “victory parade”in Baku, in December 2020, in the presence of Erdogan.
A song of resistance
Ukraine acquired a first batch of six Bayraktar TB2s in September 2019, one of which was used, two years later, to bomb a pro-Russian separatist position in the Donbass. kyiv has about twenty of these drones during the Russian invasion of February 24 and uses them to destroy in a few days a dozen helicopters, as many anti-aircraft batteries and half a dozen enemy armored vehicles. Particularly spectacular are the damage inflicted on certain Russian convoys, whose images of burnt-out vehicles go around the world.
The performance of the TB2 is such that Ukraine renews its allocations from the first days of the conflict, the Turkish drones no doubt transiting through Polish territory. The Bayraktar thus contributes significantly to stem the Russian advance and to force the aggressor into a war of positions, certainly devastating for Ukraine, but much more costly for the Kremlin.
It is to a Ukrainian soldier that we owe the composition of Bayraktara song to the glory of the Turkish drone, whose vengeful verses are chanted during demonstrations against the Russian invasion:
“The sheep came from the East to ‘restore a great state’, but the best herdsman is/Bayraktar/Their arguments were their various weapons, their powerful missiles and all their artillery, but we have a comment to throw out. ‘up/Bayraktar. »
The clip of the song, possibly subtitled in English or Arabic, soon goes viral, illustrated with images of airstrikes or burned convoys. The final verse is both menacing and determined:
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