Turkey's European Made Tanks Continue to Prove Highly Vulnerable Against Lightly Armed Insurgent Groups, Ankara looks to South Korea for Alternatives

The mainstay of the Turkish Army's armoured warfare capabilities, the German made Leopard II, have continued to underperform and prove terribly vulnerable in conflicts in Iraq and Syria. The Leopard II is considered the most capable Western made battle tank in the world, and is in service in a number of European militaries as well as several prominent export customers such as Singapore and Indoensia. Their performance however left much to be desired. Operating against Islamic State in Iraq in 2017 the Turkish tanks took extremely heavy losses to often very basic anti tank weapons employed by forces with questionable training. While Turkey took limited countermeasures to improve the German platform's survivability, this appeared to have little impact in light of their failures against Kurdish militias in Syria in 2018.

As Turkish forces launched an offensive towards Syria's Afrin, Kurdish YPG forces exacted a toll on their armoured units and in a single day destroyed a phenomenal five battle tanks. Turkey's operation 'Olive Branch', has again exposed its ground forces' critical weakness in their reliance on the vulnerable German weapons systems - and Turkish forces were on January 22nd forced to retreat from Afrin. If five main battle tanks can be destroyed in a single day by small numbers of lightly armed Kurdish militiamen, they inevitably would fare extremely poorly against a well armed modern army. Turkey has recently turned to South Korea and contracted several units of the K2 Black Panther main battle tanks, one of the few fourth generation tanks in service anywhere in the world - far more modern and capable than any European made platform. The K2, though expensive, is far more capable than Leopard II and is set to revolutionise Turkey's ground warfare capabilities. Turkish armoured units equipped with the modern South Korean platforms could well become the most advanced and capable on the European continent and in NATO - and the purchase could well lead to other countries such as Qatar or Indoensia following suit. Until then however, Turkish tank divisions are set to continue to take heavy losses should the operate offensively in neighbouring countries - whether against insurgent groups or otherwise.