According to a tweet published by the French Armed Forces Staff on January 4, 2022, the Aquitaine-class frigate Auvergne conducts a bilateral exercise with the Yavuz-class frigate Yildirim in the Black Sea.
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French Aquitaine-class frigate Auvergne and Yavuz-class frigate Yildirim (Picture source: French Armed Forces Staff)
On June 17, 2020, France accused Turkey that Turkish ships harassed a French warship which tried to check a Turkish vessel, which was suspected of smuggling arms to Libya, and that the Turkish navy is using their NATO call signals while accompanying Turkish vessels suspected of breaking the UN arms embargo in Libya.
TCG Yıldırım (F-243) is a Yavuz-class frigate of the Turkish Navy. Yıldırım was launched on 24 April 1987 by Gölcük Naval Shipyard in Kocaeli and commissioned on 22 July 1988.
The Yavuz class is a group of four frigates that were built for the Turkish Navy. They were designed in Germany and are part of the MEKO family of modular warships; in this case the MEKO 200 design.
The class has a length of 110,5 m (362 ft 6 in), a beam of 13,25 m (43 ft 6 in), and a draught of 3,94 m (12 ft 11 in). They can reach a top speed of 27 knots (50 km/h).
