Ethiopia-Turkey pact creates speculation about drone use in Tigray war

Ethiopia’s government wants to buy Turkey’s drone, Bayraktar TB2, creating speculation about the Tigray war, Reuters reports.

According to the report, Ethiopia wants to buy Bayraktar TB2 drones, after a military cooperation agreement was signed with Ankara.

Last August, Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, signed a military cooperation agreement on a visit to Ankara with Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan after Ethiopian forces had been expelled from Tigray’s capital, Mekelle, and before an October air and ground counter -offensive, which appears to have been rapidly pushed back.

According to the Guardian’s report, Alex de Waal, the Director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University, said: “The fighting is already at an intense scale and ferocity, with perhaps 100,000 soldiers already dead on the Ethiopian side. Five million civilians are in need of food aid as a result of the conflict, and yet [Ethiopia] is still shopping for drones and other arms.”