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On September 4, the US Treasury unveiled sanctions against a Turkey-based bank and two of its subsidiaries, accusing them of moving tens of millions of dollars on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and facilitating Tehran's movement of funds across the international banking system. 

It did not take long for the Turkish government to sweep in and act to contain the damage and what some interpret as a national reputational hit, which was one of the opening salvoes in the Trump/Bessent 'Economic D-Day' and secondary sanctions (Operation Economic Outcast) targeting Tehran and entities still doing business with the Islamic Republic.

On Wednesday Turkey's banking regulator has taken over most shareholder rights of the US-targeted bank - the Golden ?Global Yatirim Bankasi - through the country’s state deposit insurer, TMSF (Savings Deposit Insurance Fund).

Turkish media notes that "The decision gives the fund the authority to exercise the shareholder rights attached to the stakes, while specifically excluding dividend rights."

The newly reassigned rights cover 99.98 percent of the shares in the bank, reports also detail.

Publicly available figures indicate that Golden Global Investment Bank is a small and young bank, having €498 million ($574.5 million) in total assets, and was only founded in 2019.

In the wake of the US action, US Ambassador to Turkey and Trump special envoy for the broader region Tom Barrack had sought to calm the Turkish government by saying Washington is only targeting specific financial institutions and this is not meant as a shot against Turkey itself.

"This designation is aimed at the conduct of one entity, not at a nation, not at a banking system, and not at an ally," Barrack wrote on X.

He further declared it would be "a serious error" to interpret the measure as a judgment on the Turkish ally as a whole.

The country's Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek had simply acknowledged last week that Ankara had taken note of US Treasury announcements - suggesting some kind of serious house cleaning could soon follow.

OFAC alleges the bank was created to help Iranian oil revenues reach Turkey from China, where exchangers converted the funds into cash and gold, and accuses it of opening correspondent banking to Iranian institutions through accounts under Quds Force control. There are reports saying the bank has officially rejected the charges against it.

There's been another dangerous incident and major 'close call' involving a Russian ship in international waters off Europe.

In this case, which unfolded Monday, a Danish military helicopter reportedly hovered near a Russian military frigate, seeking to monitor and photograph it.

Soon after, according to the account of Danish military officials, the Fennec military helicopter was fired upon by flares from the Russian ship.

It happened in the Baltic Sea, after which Moscow's ambassador in Copenhagen, Vladimir Barbin, laid blame solely on the Danish side for the helicopter's "dangerous maneuvers".

One of the flares, which are typically only used for warning signals at sea when a ship is distressed, is said to have passed dangerously close to the helicopter.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called the incident serious and framed it as an extension of Russia's so-called hybrid campaign against Europe and NATO.

"Russia wants to sow fear and discord. Our answer is to stand closer together and strengthen the defense of Denmark and Europe," Frederiksen said.

And the country's Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen also condemned the event as having endangered lives.

"Denmark is working to ensure that all shipping can pass peacefully through Danish waters, but Russia is gradually moving the line for what it considers acceptable behavior," Rasmussen said, and confirmed he summoned Russia's ambassador.

Below is an example of European media playing the hawks, pressing officials over invoking NATO Article 5 'collective defense':

Denmark’s Defence Minister Jeppe Bruus told TV 2 News that one flare passed within a “matter of metres” of the aircraft, and accused Russia of “deeply unprofessional seamanship”.

When asked if Denmark would seek Article 5 consultations over the incident – invoking the NATO measure that considers an attack against one member of the bloc to be an attack against all of them – Bruus said the incident was being taken seriously, but “we are not there”.

Barbin said he had complained last year about what he called dangerous fly-bys and low hovering by a Danish helicopter over the Russian warship Vice-Admiral Kulakov.

Tensions have been soaring between Russia and Scandinavian countries of late in northern waters, particularly after early this month Norway seized a Russian government expedition vessel as it was docked at a far northern island, deemed an international zone.

Russia's Defense Minister awards corvette commander for 'DECISIVE ACTIONS' against a Danish helicopter in Baltic Sea neutral waters

Danes approached Russian warship & IGNORED international communications on Sept. 14

To prevent provocation, commander fired 2 red flares — Danes… pic.twitter.com/WXOMie2ZTK

— RTRussia (@RT_Russia_) September 16, 2026

Putin had described the incident as Ukraine's Western backers being "complicit in international terrorism" - given the seizure came at the request of the Zelensky government.

Via Middle East Eye

Turkey's new commitments to Saudi Arabia under the Mecca defence pact could increase the risk of Ankara being drawn into a confrontation with Yemen's Houthis, a development that could have significant consequences for Turkish supply lines to the Horn of Africa. Although Turkey has yet to ratify the pact, expected in October, continued Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia, and Ankara’s recent participation in the Saudi-led Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance make some form of confrontation possible.

Several regional experts interviewed by Middle East Eye said Ankara does not want a clash with the Houthis. Instead, they suggested Turkey could use its relationships with Saudi Arabia and Iran to help defuse tensions while deploying military equipment to help Riyadh better defend itself. 

A Turkish official told MEE that Riyadh had not formally requested Ankara’s assistance under the Mecca pact, which brings together Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. However, experts also noted that Ankara has much to lose from an escalation, which could disrupt Turkish military, commercial and energy supply lines through the Red Sea.

Ebuzer Demirci, a research fellow at the Secure Futures Lab at the University of Toronto Scarborough, said Bab al-Mandeb, which has effectively been controlled by the Houthis since the weekend, is a gateway to China, India and East Africa for Turkey. Any restrictions imposed on Turkish shipping would increase trade costs and transit times.

“But the more specific exposure is Somalia,” he told MEE. “Turkey’s presence there - the embassy, the military training base in Mogadishu, offshore oil exploration activities and the spaceport project - is supplied from Turkey through the Suez-Red Sea route.”

Demirci added that although personnel and urgent cargo are transported by air, heavy equipment and naval rotations move by sea and must pass through Bab al-Mandeb.

“Somalia itself trades with the Gulf and Asia through the Indian Ocean and would not be cut off by a closure,” he said. “What would be affected is the direct line between Ankara and Mogadishu, at a time when piracy off Somalia is already rising again.”

Risks of a direct intervention

Demirci said Houthi restrictions would not completely undermine Turkish influence in the region, since it is rooted in institutions in Somalia and other African countries rather than being solely dependent on maritime traffic. Turkey could also sustain its operations through air transport, he added, although at a substantially higher cost.

Turkey already has a naval presence in the region. Turkish warships are guarding an energy exploration vessel off the Somali coast, while Ankara separately continues to participate in a UN-backed anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden.

Senior Ansar Allah official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti last week warned Turkey and Pakistan against intervening in support of Saudi Arabia, saying that any direct Turkish or Pakistani intervention on Saudi Arabia’s behalf would carry a “heavy price”.

The general view in Ankara is that Turkey cannot afford a confrontation with the Houthis and should instead focus on building bridges among Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Yemeni group.

Betul Dogan-Akkas, an assistant professor of international relations at Ankara University, said Turkey has not designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization, leaving open possible channels of communication.

She argued that Istanbul’s sizeable Yemeni diaspora, whose members have deep tribal connections, could provide Ankara with valuable political capital and allow it to become more diplomatically involved in efforts to resolve the war in Yemen. “The members of the Mecca alliance would probably not want their first action to be directed against another Muslim group,” she told MEE.

Israel's military has meanwhile been deepening involvement in 'Somaliland' region, after Netanyahu govt. gave official recognition.

Muhammed Huseyin Mercan, an academic and senior fellow at the Ankara-based think tank Seta, agreed, saying that military intervention would create complications extending well beyond the Red Sea.

Pointing to last week’s attack by Iran-aligned Iraqi militias on the East-West Pipeline supplying Yanbu in Saudi Arabia, Mercan said a Turkish confrontation with the Houthis could also strain Ankara’s relations with Baghdad and complicate peace efforts involving the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Ankara has recently made progress in persuading the PKK and affiliated groups to dissolve themselves and integrate into local political and administrative structures, with Baghdad playing a crucial role in that process.

Mercan said Iraqi militias could disrupt these efforts and create additional complications for Turkey. The militias have demanded the complete withdrawal of Turkish troops from northern Iraq as part of negotiations over their own disarmament and integration into the Iraqi armed forces. “Turkey should try to bring all sides to the table and help lay the groundwork for a comprehensive agreement to end Yemen’s civil war,” he told MEE.

Defensive aid and political role

The experts agreed, however, that these risks would not necessarily prevent Turkey from providing Saudi Arabia with military equipment, air-defense systems and drones. There are signs that Ankara intends to do precisely that.

Senior regional officials familiar with the discussions told MEE that Turkey was preparing to provide defensive assistance while avoiding direct intervention inside Yemen.

The officials said the assistance could include the deployment of aircraft, operators and technical personnel, possibly beginning in October after Turkey ratifies the Mecca defense pact. The Turkish parliament is currently in recess and is not expected to consider ratification before then. “Preparations and discussions are ongoing,” one regional official said. “The defense system will be established to counter attacks originating from Yemen, including missiles and drones.”

Turkey is already active in the Saudi defense establishment and in recent years, Ankara has signed several drone and ammunition supply agreements with Riyadh 

Demirci said the most likely scenario at Bab al-Mandeb was not a complete closure of the strait but selective Houthi control. Under such a scenario, the group could apply pressure to Saudi-linked traffic while allowing other ships to pass under conditions it sets.

A Turkish Navy warship arrived in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, on Saturday and docked at the Port of Mogadishu.

The vessel, TCG Göksu (F-497), is a Gabya-class frigate that has previously operated off the Somali coast as part of Turkey’s naval mission in the region.

The… pic.twitter.com/lWUUNHGJQx

— Somali Eye (@Somalieye122) September 5, 2026

That could prove costly and disruptive for Ankara, he said, but would remain manageable. “What the Houthis should understand is that Turkey’s commitments in this region are not abstract,” Demirci said.

“Ankara has a defense agreement with Riyadh, a defense agreement with Mogadishu and a founding seat in the maritime coalition. The Houthis have no quarrel with Turkey, and it is in their interest to keep it that way.”

Yasmeen al-Eryani, executive director for knowledge production at the Yemeni think tank Sana’a Center, said the crisis also presented Turkey with an opportunity to assume a political role as a secondary intermediary. “For example, it could contribute to mitigating the impact of the Houthis’ dangerous advance in Bab al-Mandeb,” she told MEE.

“Turkey has actively strengthened its relations with Saudi Arabia while maintaining a delicate balance with Tehran. It can help convey messages, promote de-escalation and mitigate the impact of the conflict.”

China’s next-generation combat aircraft will be able to fly by themselves if a pilot loses consciousness, navigate without satellite signals and operate in self-reorganising large drone formations. That is the plan laid out by researchers from the Shenyang Aircraft Design & Research Institute, a top Chinese military aircraft design organisation, in a paper last month, the SCMP reported.

The institute is associated with the development of the Chinese next-generation aircraft commonly referred to as the J-50, which first appeared in flight-test imagery in December 2024, although the paper does not mention the J-50 by name or confirm that the aircraft will incorporate any of the described technologies.

China’s future fighters, including the J-50 and J-36, are considered rivals to the US Air Force’s sixth-generation main fighter programme, the F-47, being developed by Boeing.

The lead researcher is chief flight-control designer Zhang Dong at the institute, and his team’s paper – rare for its public details – was published in a peer-reviewed journal Aircraft Design in August.

China’s next-generation stealth fighter programs were undergoing a “leapfrog transformation from being able to fly steadily to being able to win in combat”, wrote Zhang and his colleagues.

Zhang’s study presents a future of pilots handing over control during periods of extreme workload or incapacitation, quantum navigation technologies supporting operations in satellite-denied environments and crewed fighters coordinating attack, reconnaissance and protection missions with reconfigurable wingman drones.

The team’s institute is part of the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which oversees much of the country’s aircraft research and development.

Its subsidiary, Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, is also developing the J-36 fighter, widely regarded as another candidate for China’s next-generation sixth-generation combat aircraft.

In 2025, an investigation by defence news website, The War Zone, using satellite imagery found that the Chengdu J-36 and the Shenyang J-50 aircraft were both based at an experimental military airfield near Lop Nur, a highly secretive site for aerospace test flights that has often been compared to the United States’ Area 51.

Their simultaneous presence at the same base suggested that China’s military was actively supporting the parallel development of the two programmes.

Zhang’s paper presents a rare technological road map for future combat aircraft, describing a fundamental restructuring of the flight-control system from a device concerned mainly with flight quality into a core enabler of collaborative engagement, intelligent manoeuvre and mission effectiveness.

The change reflected what the authors described as three successive eras of air combat.

In the earlier “energy manoeuvrability” era, victory depended heavily on physical manoeuvring performance in close-range combat, while flight-control systems were largely closed and centralised, with specialised hardware and software designed mainly to keep the aircraft stable, controllable and responsive to pilot inputs.

The rise of long-range radar, stealth shaping and precision-guided weapons shifted combat towards “information manoeuvrability”, where detecting, tracking and attacking an opponent before being detected became increasingly important.

Fifth-generation aircraft such as the F-22 and J-20 use full-authority digital fly-by-wire systems and increasingly integrate flight control with fire-control and propulsion systems through high-speed data links.

The authors argued that the next phase was “cognitive manoeuvrability”, in which artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and distributed networking allowed air combat to move from platform-versus-platform competition towards system-level contests involving manned-unmanned formations.

This changes what flight control is expected to do.

“The functional positioning of the flight control system is undergoing a fundamental restructuring – from a platform controller merely pursuing flight quality to a core enabler of collaborative engagement management, intelligent manoeuvre decision-making and closed-loop mission effectiveness,” Zhang and his co-authors wrote.

The first major capability is autonomous flight control.

Instead of making pilots constantly turn high-level battle plans into precise stick movements, the new system would let on-board intelligent algorithms do that job automatically, translating tactical orders into smooth, continuous flight actions while keeping the aircraft safely within its physical limits, even during extreme manoeuvres.

The aircraft would constantly monitor its own health by fusing data from sensors such as inertial navigation, airspeed indicators, control-surface positions and engine performance.

This would allow it to assess its flight state, estimate remaining manoeuvrability and detect potential problems before they develop into emergencies.

The system could then automatically adjust control settings and redistribute on-board resources while strictly enforcing safety boundaries to avoid stalls, loss of control or stuck control surfaces.

In particularly stressful situations, the aircraft could take over from the pilot.

The paper proposes allocating control authority between humans and autonomous systems so that pilots can spend less effort on low-level aircraft handling and more on battlefield assessment and tactical decisions.

During periods of excessive workload or if a pilot loses the ability to control the aircraft, the system could take control and continue executing the intended tactical task while prioritising flight safety.

The second major change concerns navigation.

Future combat aircraft may need to operate when satellite navigation is jammed, disrupted or unavailable, prompting the researchers to identify quantum inertial navigation, visual navigation, geomagnetic navigation and terrain matching as potential technologies for passive autonomous navigation.

The paper proposes combining data from various sensors to reduce errors and prevent failures caused by the degradation or loss of any single sensor under severe electromagnetic interference.

Quantum inertial navigation is therefore presented as part of a broader effort to give aircraft an independent sense of movement and position, rather than as a replacement for GPS.

The study framed these technologies as areas requiring further engineering research and implementation, rather than saying a quantum navigation system had already been deployed on a Chinese fighter.

The biggest shift, however, may come from the way multiple aircraft work together.

Future formations could pair crewed fighters acting as command nodes with uncrewed wingmen assigned to reconnaissance, attack and protection roles. Flight-control systems would coordinate their positions, routes, electromagnetic spectrum use and weapons-launch windows while dynamically allocating tasks between aircraft.

The authors saw this as more than a traditional formation controlled by a single leader.

If an aircraft suffered a malfunction or combat damage and left the formation, the remaining aircraft could automatically reorganise, replace the missing node and redistribute its unfinished tasks.

The system used consensus-based coordination and a dynamic “virtual leader” replacement mechanism to maintain autonomous operation without relying on a permanent central node.

Zhang and his team said single-aircraft autonomous control guaranteed survival in complex environments, while swarm coordination delivered multiplied combat effectiveness.

The paper pointed towards a more heterogeneous air-combat network rather than a simple arrangement of one crewed fighter and several identical drones.

It further highlighted large collaborative wingmen alongside various aircraft and autonomous platforms, suggesting a future architecture in which crewed fighters, larger unmanned aircraft and smaller autonomous systems could perform different functions within the same network.

Aircraft such as the Chinese Y-20 transport aircraft, the J-20 fighter and even the H-20 stealth strategic bomber, which is believed to be under development, could potentially form part of such a combat network.

However, Zhang and his team did not say whether the “combat group”, or the crewed “lead aircraft” and unmanned wingmen, would consist mainly of large numbers of drones or a combination of the larger aircraft described above.

The Shenyang Aircraft Corporation and the paper’s authors did not respond to a request for comment.

Based on the paper’s publicly available discussion, the researchers suggested retaining conventional systems engineering as the safety backbone while using intelligent tools for tasks such as parameter optimisation, test expansion, automated testing and defect detection, with early trials conducted on lower-cost uncrewed platforms before broader adoption in major aircraft.

But the researchers do not advocate handing the aircraft’s most safety-critical functions directly to artificial intelligence (AI).

Instead, they identified a basic engineering conflict between intelligence and flight safety.

Data-driven algorithms can be difficult to explain and verify, and they might not apply in every situation, especially in extreme scenarios.

Applying such systems directly to the innermost control loops could therefore introduce unpredictable risks.

The proposed solution was a layered architecture.

“Engineering practice widely adopts a hybrid architecture with a closed core and open periphery,” the team wrote, allowing high-reliability, real-time functions to remain tightly controlled while more flexible software functions could be upgraded and connected across different platforms.

Under this model, the inner loop would retain conventional, highly deterministic controls for functions such as attitude stabilization, control-surface actuation and hard flight-envelope protection.

AI would operate mainly in the outer loop, handling tactical decision-making, trajectory optimization, multi-aircraft coordination and payload adaptation, while rigid safeguards would constrain its commands so that its recommendations remain inside a safe operating envelope.

The researchers called for further work on open layered architecture, verifiable intelligent flight control and cross-domain cooperative control, supported by large-scale simulation and flight-test data to improve the robustness and verifiability of intelligent models.