Just before the NATO summit convened in Ankara, the Turkish capital, last week, a tense security incident occurred. According to reports, a national NATO “Air Raid Warning Red” was triggered across the entire country on Tuesday morning around 7 a.m. A German Bundeswehr Patriot anti-aircraft battery stationed in the Malatya province was simultaneously placed on high alert.
The alliance’s radar systems had detected a rocket shortly before the alarm, which was traveling at high speed into Turkish airspace from Georgia. Although the projectile was initially considered a ballistic missile, it did not target Ankara, where the alliance’s heads of state and government arrived later that afternoon for their annual meeting. Instead, it crashed into the Black Sea shortly thereafter. Despite the actual trajectory, the alarm caused considerable unrest within NATO.
It was not until later that it was revealed that the projectile was a misguided anti-air defense missile fired by Russian forces in the breakaway Georgian republic of Abkhazia. This incident adds to a series of airspace violations along NATO’s external borders, thereby increasing the risk of escalation between Russia and the alliance.
