Members of a nationalist youth organization attacked two US Marines in the Turkish city of Izmir on Monday. The service members had disembarked from the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp, which arrived on 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 placing a white sack over his head. The mob reportedly yelled “Yankee, go home!” as they attacked 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,” Commander Timothy Gorman, a spokesman for US Naval Forces Europe-Africa, said.
The US Embassy released a statement, saying the 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 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 placed sacks over the heads of American service members in six different cities. She said the attacks were “a response” to a 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 relations between the countries.
Although Ankara remains a key ally in the region for Washington, 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 S-400 air defense missile systems from Russia.