A group of men assaulted U.S. service members in Türkiye, authorities confirmed Tuesday, a few hours after a video that appeared to show the physical assault surfaced online.
“We can confirm reports that U.S. service members embarked aboard the USS Wasp were the victims of an assault in İzmir today,” a brief statement from the U.S. Embassy in Ankara began.
The video, posted by Clash Report, shows a group of men holding a shaven-headed man on a street crowded with onlookers, just before a man throws a plastic bag over the victim’s head. Shouts of “Yankee, go home!” then arise as another man rushes into the fray in apparent defense of the victim. A man briefly appears, punches the defender on the arm, and disappears from view, the video shows.
More than 700,000 people have watched the video as of the time of this report.
Another video, shared by the same user, shows a man yelling words in Turkish just before the victim is hooded. Another man, also being restrained and described in the video as an American military officer, is heard repeatedly shouting, “Help!” (RELATED: Video Shows Pro-Palestinian Protesters Trying To Storm US Air Base Abroad)
New footage showing an American soldier being hooded in Türkiye today.
The U.S. Embassy in Ankara confirmed that the individual was U.S. military personnel from the USS Wasp, and expressed gratitude to Turkish authorities for their swift response. https://t.co/EWL7FcJmni pic.twitter.com/H9tcXMTEoc
— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 2, 2024
The service members “are now safe,” the U.S. Embassy statement continued. “We thank Turkish authorities for their rapid response and ongoing investigation.”
US soldiers stand guard on the roof of the US Embassy in Ankara on April 26, 2021, after the the United States closed its Ankara embassy and the consulate in Istanbul and two other cities for citizen and visa services as a precaution for April 26 and April 27. – The closure came after Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan on April 26, 2021, denounced US President Joe Biden’s recognition of the Armenian genocide as “groundless” and harmful to bilateral ties. (Photo by ADEM ALTAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Clash Report alleged that the Youth Union of Turkey (Türkiye Gençlik Birliği, TGB) was behind the assault.
“The [TGB] is a prominent Turkish youth organization characterized by its anti-American, anti-Atlanticist, and Eurasianist ideologies,” the accompanying post alleged.
The TGB — the youth branch of Türkiye’s leftist Labor Party — had similarly attacked seven German soldiers in 2013 in opposition to a NATO mission to install a Patriot missile system near Türkiye‘s border with Syria, the Atlantic Council reported.
The group’s act of pulling sacks over the soldiers’ heads apparently recalls “the American treatment of 11 Turkish soldiers in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniyah in 2003,” the think-tank’s report revealed.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather near the U.S. Embassy during a protest against the U.S. and Israel in Ankara, Turkey on May 27, 2024. (Photo by ALTAN GOCHER/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images)
The Turkish commandos were detained for 60 hours and released after bilateral talks, with the U.S. and Türkiye regretting the incident, according to the BBC.
The USS Wasp (LHD-1) is currently on the Aegean Sea, between Greece and Türkiye, according to the ship tracking service provider VesselFinder. İzmir, the western Turkish port city where the assault occurred, is on Türkiye’s Aegean coast.
