Turkey pressed Canada to sell air-strike gear later used in Karabakh

PanARMENIAN.Net - Documents released to a Parliamentary committee probing how Canadian-made air-strike targeting gear ended up in the 2020 Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh show the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau circumvented an arms embargo last year to send the same equipment to Turkey after assurances from Ankara that it would only be used to protect civilians under attack in Syria, The Globe and Mail reports.

The House of Commons foreign affairs committee’s inquiry has focused to a significant degree on how this restricted Canadian imaging technology, made by Burlington, Ont.-based L3Harris Wescam, turned up in Turkish-made drones being operated by Azerbaijan in the battle over Nagorno-Karabakh. The Wescam gear had been authorized for export to Turkey only.

After reports surfaced proving that the Turkish drones were used against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, Canada suspended the export of sophisticated Canadian drone technology to Turkey.

Canada issued export permits last May for the delivery of seven MX-15D air-strike targeting systems made by L3Harris Wescam to Turkish drone-maker Baykar. That green light for shipments to Turkey came despite an arms embargo in place since late 2019 that prohibited the export of most categories of military gear to Turkish customers.

But Canadian government documents released to the foreign affairs committee, and first made public on Friday, show Turkey had pressed Ottawa to allow the shipment on the grounds it was necessary to safeguard civilians in Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib.

A May 6, 2020, memo by Marta Morgan, deputy minister of foreign affairs, recommends to then-foreign affairs minister François-Philippe Champagne that he permit the export of this Wescam gear to the Turks. In the memo, Morgan said this represents an “exceptional circumstances” case.

Kelsey Gallagher, a researcher with arms control group Project Ploughshares says it’s absurd that Canada first barred arms exports to Turkey back in 2019 over Ankara’s conduct in northern Syria, but then granted military exports again for Turkish operations in the same third country. “Why is that permissible? What is the logic here?” he asked.