ANATOLIAN PROTECTOR – ACTIVE FENCE

Hostilities in Syria had led to a high number of casualties and several incidents across the Turkish border.

On 21 November 2012, Turkey submitted a request for support to NATO, following the use of Soviet ballistic missiles, SCUD type, by the Assad government. The known inaccuracy of these weapons was of concern to the Turkish government, which had already suffered military and civilian losses within its borders due to the ongoing Syrian conflict. The Alliance granted the request on 4 December 2012 and authorized the deployment of some Patriot missile batteries in the western part of the province of South-Eastern Anatolia, along the border with Syria. Ù

This was not the first time that NATO provided such support to Turkey. Similar Patriot missile batteries were already deployed in the country in both 1991 and 2003. Operations have been assigned to the control of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR). Units from the Netherlands, the United States and Germany, whose armed forces and artillery supported the so-called “Anatolian Protector” operation, were involved. The following year, as a result of the escalation of violence on Syrian territory, the mission’s mandate was extended, and its name changed in Operation “Active Fence”. In this new framework, Spain and Italy replaced the Dutch contribute. This mission had a purely defensive purpose, despite the criticism of Russia, Syria and Iran, which judged the operation as an alleged first step of an alleged NATO intervention in the Syrian conflict.