The United States and Turkey had a conversation after a U.S. fighter jet shot down a Turkish drone in Syria.
Here’s what happened:
The United States and Turkey are both part of NATO, a group of countries that work together.
They had a talk because a U.S. plane shot down a Turkish drone in Syria.
The U.S. said the drone got too close to their soldiers in Syria, but Turkey said it was lost during their operations.
During their talk, a person named Hakan Fidan from Turkey told the U.S. that Turkey would keep targeting a group called the Kurds.
The U.S. works with the Kurds in Syria, but Turkey sees them as people who want to separate from their country and as terrorists.
Mr. Fidan told the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, that Turkey will keep fighting against these Kurdish groups in Iraq and Syria.
On the other side, a spokesperson from the U.S. State Department said that Mr. Blinken talked about the need for the U.S. and Turkey to work together better and avoid problems when they do their activities.
On Thursday, U.S. military officials told everyone that a U.S. fighter jet called F-16 shot down the Turkish drone.
The drone was flying near U.S. troops in Syria, even after they gave it many warnings.
The U.S. forces saw several drones doing attacks near a place called Al Hasakah in Syria early in the morning.
Some of these attacks were about 1 kilometer away from the U.S. soldiers, so they hid in safe places called bunkers.
Four hours later, the F-16 shot down the drone because they thought it might harm them.
A person named Brig Gen Patrick Ryder from the Pentagon talked to the reporters.
He said it’s sad “It’s regrettable when you have two NATO allies and there’s an incident like this,” he told reporters.
It’s the first time something like this has happened between them.
There are about 900 U.S. soldiers in Syria, and they are there to fight against a group called the Islamic State (IS).
Turkey has been doing air attacks on Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq because there was a big bomb blast in its capital city, Ankara.
A group called the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) said they were connected to that bomb blast.
Turkey thinks the PKK and the YPG are the same, but the U.S. has been working with the YPG.
They are part of a group of fighters in Syria that the U.S. supports, and they are called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). They have been fighting against IS in Syria.
Right after the call between Mr. Blinken and Mr. Fidan, Turkey said they started attacking Kurdish targets again in northern Syria.
They hit 15 places with a lot of weapons, including headquarters and places where people stay.
The PKK started fighting against the Turkish government in 1984.
They wanted a separate Kurdish country in Turkey.
But later, in the 1990s, they changed their mind and asked for more freedom for the Kurdish people. Sadly, more than 40,000 people have died in this conflict.
The fighting started again after a two-year break in 2015 when a ceasefire ended.
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