Using Aviation for Dirty Wars and Malicious Acts

Air flights are basically a field of endeavour with sportive, scientific and commercial aspects. However, aircraft have been used in wars for military purposes as early as the First World War. Throughout history, even the most peaceful societies have fought in defence of their homelands and nations when attacked, using every means at their disposal; in this context, the use of aircrafts in wars is commonplace. The anti-war stance of anti-militarist and pacifist ideologies is somewhat distant from the realities of the world. Wars are a reality; unfortunately, it is in the nature of human beings to seek superiority over others and to resolve conflicts by force. All peace negotiations, international agreements and legal sanctions are meant to curb such behaviour. The words of the great Atatürk, ‘War is a murder unless the life of a nation is endangered’, is a mind-opening statement that draws the boundaries of what is reasonable and ‘removes wars fought for the defence of the homeland and the use of aircraft in this process from the category of immorality’. What is unethical in the context of aviation is the use of aircraft for imperial, illegal or ideological purposes and the harming of innocent people.

Examples of events that make aviation unethical:

1. The Dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Japan:

The atomic bombs (Little Boy and Fat Man) dropped by American pilots Paul Tibbets on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Charles Sweeney on Nagasaki three days later killed more than 200,000 people. The bombs were not dropped on Japanese military units, but on defenceless civilians. Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the first of the B-29 bombers, said, ‘If Dante had been in the aeroplane with us that day, he would have been horrified’, referring to the ‘Inferno’ chapter of the Divine Comedy. The co-pilot, R. Lewis, expressed his astonishment with the words ‘Oh my God, what have we done!’... But his emotions were not at all in harmony with these literary and sad expressions. Stories that Tibbets later committed suicide were completely false.

P. Tibbets emphasised that he had no regrets, saying that thanks to the atomic bombs ‘Japan surrendered, World War II was over; if the war had continued, more people would have died; therefore, what he did was morally right’. This discourse of contribution to peace, which did not sound convincing at all, was nothing but demagoguery and an attempt to find a cover for the crime.

In the 2023 film ‘Oppenheimer’, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who built the atomic bomb with scientific enthusiasm and excitement of discovery, realised that his invention was being misused. In the film, when the scientist, who was invited to the White House by President Truman, was appreciated, he said that he ‘felt that there was blood on his hands’; Truman, finding him romantic, proudly (!) said that this blood was on his own hands... Oppenheimer, representing the conscience of science, expressed his pain with the words (of Krishna in the Hindu holy book of 3,000 BC) ‘Now I have become death, the destroyer of worlds’...

2. Downing of Dag Hammarskjöld's aeroplane:

Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations (former foreign minister of Sweden), and his team were on board a DC-6 aircraft travelling to Zambia to decolonise the Congo and stop the civil war. On the night of 18 September 1961, during landing at Ndola Airport, the tower ordered the aircraft to make several turns in the air, after which shots were fired from an aircraft (by a Belgian military pilot). The wing and propellers struck trees and the aircraft crashed, killing the Secretary-General, other passengers and the flight crew in a fire. It turned out that Hammarskjöl had been assassinated because he had ‘put a spanner in the works’ of separatists, mercenaries and foreign powers (Belgium, Britain, France, USA) in their efforts to thwart peace and their copper mine-based interests. Air traffic records were destroyed (1, 2).

3. Suspicious Deaths of Statesmen:

-29 March 1959:

President of the Central African Republic, independence hero Barthelemey Boganda, died when his plane crashed. His successor, Bokassa, was a man of the colonial countries. 

-28 October 1959:

Camilo Cienfuegos, number three of the Cuban Revolution, crashed his Cessna-310 into the sea on his way to Havana. It was alleged that this assassination was the work of Fidel Castro.

-13 April 1966:

Iraqi President Abdul Salam Arif was killed in a helicopter crash.

-30 July 1976:

Madagascar Prime Minister Joel Rakotomalala died in a helicopter crash.

-27 June 1980:

Itavia Airlines' DC-9 aircraft crashed off Ustica Island, killing 81 people. It was understood that the plane was shot down by a French missile as part of an assassination attempt against Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi; Gaddafi was saved by not getting on the plane with the intelligence he received.

-4 December 1980:

Portuguese Prime Minister Francisco Sá Carneiro and the Minister of Defence were killed when their Cessna 421 crashed in Lisbon after take-off.

-24 May 1981:

Ecuadorian President Jaime Roldos and his Minister of Defence were killed when their plane crashed on the border with Peru.

-19 October 1986:

Mozambican President Samora Machel was killed when his Mozambique Air plane crashed in South Africa.

-17 August 1988:

Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq and several senior military officials died in a suspicious plane crash.

-6 April 1994:

The Presidents of Burundi and Rwanda died in a plane crash.

-26 January 2004:

Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski died in a plane crash.

-10 April 2010:

Polish President Lech Kaczynski's plane crashed at Smolensk airport in Russia, killing 96 people, including the President.

4. Iranian airliner shot down in the Persian Gulf:

On 3 July 1988, an Iranian passenger plane on a Tehran-Dubai flight was shot down by an SM-2 MR missile fired from the USS Vicennes while over the Strait of Hormuz. It was said that the plane was shot down because it was mistaken for an F-14 descending for attack on radar and did not respond to messages sent on military frequency; 290 innocent people were killed. US President R.Reagan did not apologise but rewarded the crew. He also hinted at the possibility of a deliberate shooting, saying that this incident had accelerated the cessation of the Iraq-Iran war. The US paid $61 million in compensation to Iran and closed the incident...

5. Lockerbie Sabotage:

On 21 December 1988, 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground were killed when a bomb planted on a Pan-Am Boeing 747 aircraft flying between London and York exploded over the town of Lockerbie in Scotland. The perpetrator, El Megrahi, an agent of the Libyan secret service, initially denied it, but everything came to light and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Libya admitted in 2003 that the sabotage was the work of the secret service and paid $2.7 billion in compensation to the relatives of the dead.

6. Turkish plane shot down in Hatay:

On 21 October 1989, a BN-2A Islander aircraft of the Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre was shot down by Syria 20 km from the border while photographing maps near the town of Altınözü in Hatay. Although the Syrian radar instructed the two Mig-21 jet fighters to ‘fly close for identification only’, the pilot opened fire; pilots Faik Aytan, Talat Gencer, technician Yusuf Gören, engineers Selahattin Çelik and Fikri Köşker were killed in the plane crash.

7. Pablo Escobar's Sabotage:

On 27 November 1989, Colombian narco-terrorist Pablo Escobar planned to sabotage Presidential candidate César Gaviria on Aviance Airlines Flight 203. The plane crashed when a plastic explosive detonated, killing 107 people. Gaviria was not among the dead, because he had not boarded the aeroplane after receiving a last-minute tip-off...

8. Assassination of Eşref Bitlis:

On 17 February 1993, the Beechcraft B200 King Air type plane carrying Gendarmerie General Commander Org. On 17 February 1993, the Beechcraft B200 King Air type plane carrying General Commander of Gendarmerie Org. Eşref Bitlis crashed in Yenimahalle, Ankara, 5 minutes after taking off for Diyarbakır. Along with Eşref Bitlis, his adjutant, two pilots and a technician were martyred. It was said that the plane crashed due to icing and pilotage error. Years later, it was announced that there was no icing, engine failure or piloting error. The future Chief of General Staff, Org. Eşref Bitlis, the future Chief of General Staff, was saying that the US planes taking off from the Incirlik Base were distributing aid to the PKK, that the financing was coming from England and Germany, that a Kurdish State was being tried to be established in Northern Iraq and that the Hammer Force should leave Turkey. For this reason, the US Embassy had complained to the government several times. According to the Chief of General Staff and the Commander of the Land Forces of the time, the incident was an unfortunate (!) accident due to icing and pilotage error. According to Cüneyt Özdemir, who contacted witnesses and Bitlis's family to report the incident on TV programmes and published it as a book, it was a suspicious death that smelled of assassination; according to former Chief of General Staff Intelligence Lieutenant General İsmail Hakkı Pekin, it was clearly an assassination. The file, which was closed with the expert's decision to ice the case, was not forgotten by the media, family and patriotic people, and books were written on the subject (3, 4).

9. Attack on the Twin Towers:

On 11 September 2001, four passenger planes hijacked by terrorists were used in suicide attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in New York. Some 3,000 innocent people died in the buildings and on the streets. According to some conspiracy theories, this was a scenario created by the USA to justify its attack on Afghanistan. But it has now been confirmed that it was the planned action of 19 Al-Qaeda militants.

10. Torture of Guantanamo prisoners on aeroplanes:

It is known that the CIA tortures prisoners from different parts of the world on aeroplanes while transporting them to the US base at Guantanamo in Cuba. It was revealed that between 2002-2007, a total of 24 flights were made between Incirlik Base and Guantanamo via Italy, and Spanish military airfields were used 25 times.

11. Malaysian Aircraft Downed in Ukraine:

Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 Flight MH17 exploded over Ukraine on 17 July 2014 while flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. 15 crew and 283 passengers (298 people in total) were killed. The plane was shot down by a missile fired from the ground; the order was given by Lieutenant Colonel Igor Girkin, the retired Minister of Defence of the Donetzk Republic, who was a member of the Russian Federation's Military Intelligence Service. The missile launchers were smuggled to Russia; European observers who wanted to inspect the wreckage were not given the opportunity...

12. Downing of Prigojin's plane in Russia:

On 24 August 2023, a private jet carrying Yevgeniy Prigojin, the founder of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, and 9 others crashed in the Tver region of Russia. 2 months ago, Prigojin and his army of thousands of people, who started a rebellion march to Moscow and threatened to hang some people, including the Minister of Defence, drew the reaction of President Putin and interpreted it as treason. Of the 10 people who died in the plane crash, 3 were pilots, the others were Prigojin and Wagner founder Dmitry Utkin and other prominent people. No one believed it was an ‘accident’. 

13. Cyber Attacks:

In 2004, Delta Airlines' entire electronic systems crashed and dozens of flights were cancelled; the perpetrator was caught, the bill was $500 million. In 2006, the FAA's air control system in Alaska was crashed by hackers. In 2013, the international passport control systems at Istanbul Atatürk and Sabiha Gökçen Airports were hacked; many flights were delayed... More dramatic than these incidents was the accident on 20 August 2008 at Madrid Brajas Airport in which 154 people were killed in an MD82 type plane. The flaps did not open on take-off, and the system that should have warned this situation did not work. It was claimed that the accident could have been caused by a malicious software or a trojan-type virus. On 10 December 2014, ICAO, IATA and other relevant organisations participated in a meeting held in Montreal to determine prevention and strategies for cyber threats; measures were discussed (5).

References

1. Negroni C. Kaza Dedektifleri. Çeviri: Şenay D. Kuzu. Panama Yay. Ankara, 2018. s. 109-18.

2. Fatih Yılmaz. 58 yıllık uçak kazasının sır perdesi aralandı. http://www.kokpit.aero/bm-ucak-kazasi-gizem

3. Erkan Macit. Eşref Bitlis suikastı. Önce Vatan Gazetesi, (17.1.2019). https://www.oncevatan.com.tr/esref-bitlis-suikasti-makale,43635.html

4. Ercan Dolapçı. Kanlı suikastın üzerinden 26 yıl geçti! Org. Bitlis neden hedefe kondu? (Aydınlık, 16.2.2019) https://www.aydinlik.com.tr/kanli-suikastin-uzerinden-26-yil-gecti-org-bitlis-neden-hedefe-kondu-ozgurluk-meydani-subat-2019-3

5. Akkutay A.İ. Sivil Havacılığa Yönelik Gerçekleştirilen Siber Saldırılar: Uygulanacak Uluslararası Hukuk Kuralları, Yetki ve Sorumluluk. Türkiye Adalet Akademisi Dergisi. 2017;32: 151-96.