SAKARYA, Türkiye

Turkish firm Altinay Defense sets its sights on the EU market as the bloc increases its defense budget to export critical subsystems and other innovative products they developed, the firm’s general manager told Anadolu.

Burak Mercan said both the domestic and the international demands for the Turkish defense industry are on the rise, and Altinay Defense aims to enter among the top 100 defense firms in the next 10 years with an export-oriented approach to boost their growth rates over the years.

“Europe was not a potential market for the Turkish defense industry until recently, but with rising security concerns, the bloc announced a serious budget for its defense industry last year,” he said. “Despite the EU’s technical prowess being equal to ours and even better at certain points, their industrial capacities do not meet the level of the figures they announced.”

“We can grab a significant portion of the pie and add the European market to our exports, in addition to the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Turkic states, South America, and North Africa regions,” he added.

Mercan said the company intends to invest in people and new technologies in the coming years to develop "micro-class and heavy-lift air vehicles, military robot technologies, and autonomous recycling systems."

He pointed out that the firm invested about $50 million last year to establish production facilities and technological infrastructure and that it has allocated another $50 million this year to implement an Engineering Center of Excellence and an Aerospace Center of Excellence in the Turkish capital Ankara.

Mercan emphasized that the firm will expand its human resources to achieve its export potential, as well as identify the technological areas that need investments.

“Countries imposing embargoes on Türkiye should see that we have built a quality structure and established competence to overcome these—we have developed many systems to be exported with the efforts of domestically producing our defense products,” he said. “I don’t believe tariffs or embargoes will affect our defense industry.”