Video purportedly released by Turkish troops captures the moment a brutal ATGM strike is carried out against an alleged Kurdish position somewhere in Syria.

I have a few problems with this video, but we'll start with the alleged claims first. According to Telegram, Reddit, and Twitter, this videos shows a Turkish military strike against Kurdish troops somewhere in Syria. The video labels the fighters as members of the YPG, but there's a lot of stuff that's off about this. Clearly, this strike is actual combat footage, and we are watching someone's day get absolutely ruined by an ATGM strike. My problem with the video stems in the release label of the video itself.

The Turkish Military has always been extremely professional about their military releases. It's not often that we see something like this coming out of that organization. Love them or hate them, no one can say that the Turkish Military isn't professional in almost all of their actions, even when those actions are staged raids against PKK fighters and tunnel systems in Northern Iraq. In the video above however, we're getting an almost Free Syrian Army-esque approach to a release on combat footage, and I think that's because the video was indeed recorded by the Free Syrian Army.

First, the audio of the video has been entirely removed. In my opinion, this is because the fighters were probably chanting the usual religious zealot nut-job stuff. You know exactly what I'm talking about, so let's not dwell on it. It's not something the Turks often do when they're engaged in combat. Second, the camera is offset from the ATGM system. Official recordings released by the Turkish Ministry of Defense are almost always going to include some sort of b-roll of the weapon system being set-up, established and aimed. They're also going to make those weapon systems the focal point of their video in almost every release. Third, the Turkish military is not known for utilizing ATGMs against positions like this because they have access to an entire host of air platforms that could have made this exact strike with absolutely zero risk to the troops on the deck. Point blank, drones are greater than ATGMs.

Last, and not least, is the amount of trolling and controversy surrounding this specific piece of combat footage. Generally speaking, whenever anything between the Kurds and the Turks hits the internet, it's absolutely swarmed with bot comments from both sides of the aisle. This video is not being swarmed by the Turks, it's only being swarmed by the Kurdish side of the conversation, which again leads me to believe that this isn't a Turkish release, but something from earlier in the last decade.

I've looked extensively through my own back catalog of combat footage from the Syrian Civil War, and have not found another copy of this video in my personal archive, nor have I found it anything that Will or Funker Actual have posted to the webpage throughout the past decade we've been covering down on this conflict. That said, I believe this video was most likely recorded by the Free Syrian Army. The target is most likely Syrian Arab Army troops sitting in the open, as if this were a YPG position we would see flags indicating as much and also commentary from the Kurdish people claiming the casualties from this incident.

If and when more evidence about this video is released, I'll revisit this post with an update. At the moment there is nothing that conclusively makes me believe this is a Turkish strike against Kurdish forces. More likely, this is a Turkish civilian who thought he was being edgy editing this video together. Even more likely, this is combat footage taken from the Syrian Civil War and it shows a strike against an SAA position. I would be inclined to change my find if we had a better view of the uniforms the troops in the video were wearing, however at the moment there just is too many things stacked against this video. Chief among them is the lack of an official statement from the Turkish Ministry of Defense claiming responsibility.