The group behind the incident said American troops have “Palestinian blood” on their hands
Members of a nationalist youth organization have attacked two US Marines in the Turkish city of Izmir on Monday. The service members disembarked from the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, which arrived earlier that day during its deployment in the Mediterranean Sea.
A video of the altercation shows a group of men holding down a plain-clothed Marine, with one of the assailants putting a white sack over his head. The mob reportedly yelled “Yankee, go home!” when attacking the servicemen.
According to the Izmir governor’s office, security forces “quickly intervened in the incident,” detaining 15 suspects.
“The two Marines were aided by other Marines in the area and were subsequently taken to a local hospital for evaluation as a precaution but were not injured and have returned to the USS Wasp,” said Commander Timothy Gorman, a spokesman for US Naval Forces Europe-Africa.
The US Embassy released a statement, saying that Americans “are now safe.” The diplomats thanked the Turkish authorities for “their rapid response and ongoing investigation.”
The assailants were members of the nationalist Youth Union of Türkiye (TGB), which is affiliated with the small Patriotic Party. “The US soldiers who have the blood of our soldiers and thousands of Palestinians on their hands cannot pollute our country,” the party said in a statement on X (formerly Twitter).
TGB Secretary General Aylin Kum told Euronews that the group had previously put sacks over the heads of American service members in six different cities. She said that the attacks were “a response” to the 2003 incident in Iraq, when US troops briefly detained Turkish commandos and transported them with hoods over their heads. The incident caused widespread outrage in Türkiye at the time and put a strain on the relations between the countries.
Although Ankara remains Washington’s important ally in the region, the two NATO members have repeatedly clashed in recent years.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war in Gaza and launched incursions against US-allied Kurdish forces in Syria. The US, meanwhile, unsuccessfully pressured Ankara to scrap its deal to buy the S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia.
