By Tuncay Kayaoglu
ISTANBUL
Recent news that Turkey has produced a domestically made drone has taken a surprising backseat to twists and turns in the Kurdish solution process and the rise of the U.S. dollar against the lira.
Once, Turks developing a drone would have been breaking news as the government badly needed these technologically advanced machines in its long-running fight with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
Although the state has entered into a process to end the Kurdish conflict through peaceful means, uncertainties in the Middle East persist and Turkey needs drones to secure its skies.
Last month saw the launch of Karayel ("northwest wind" in English). An earlier drone, Anka ("Phoenix"), was produced by Turkish Aerospace Industries – TAI – in 2010 with Karayel being developed by Vestel, a private Turkish company.
Vestel announced last month that Karayel passed a crucial test flying with an electro-optical camera and a total payload of 51 kilograms. “The Karayel drone is ready to enter the Turkish army’s inventory,” the company said.
The private firm has developed the drone with its own resources. It has invested $30 million in the program, which started in 2005.
Apart from Anka and Karayel, there is an additional drone project – Bayraktar – developed by Istanbul-based Baykar. TAI has also been developing a more advanced version of Anka which can fire missiles.
For many Turks, such locally produced drones are a source of national pride. The drones also attract foreign interest; the Egyptian government in 2012 was in talks with a Turkish company to buy Anka before two countries’ relationships soured.
Bahrain has also reportedly showed interest in an attack helicopter, the so-called ATAK ("Attack"), another domestically developed defense project.
These projects point to recent successes by Turkish defense companies. Turkey has stepped up its military expenditure and export of military products in recent years. A quick look at data from the Turkish Undersecretary for Defense Industries shows that the defense sector is developing new battle tanks and attack helicopters, among other products.
Turkey's defense industry has grown economically. Total turnover increased to US$5 billion in 2013 from $1.8 billion in 2006. On the export side, Turkish companies have raised their export to $1.6 billion in 2014 – that figure was below a billion dollars just three years ago.
Surprisingly, the U.S. was the largest importer of Turkish defense hardware, with a total of US$547 million in 2014. Thirty-three percent of exports were to North America while 23% were to European countries.
Malaysia was a second major market with $109-million worth of Turkish imports, followed by the United Arab Emirates with $87 million.
“We export one-third of what we produce. In recent years the defense industry has gained considerable momentum in exports. Our products have been in demand in global markets,” Latif Aral Alis, chairman of Turkey’s Defense and Aerospace Industry Exporters’ Association, representing at least 400 firms, said in February.
Although “these figures are important,” says Metin Gurcan, a defense expert and a former Turkish army captain whose articles regularly appear on foreign news websites, he also notes that the Turkish defense sector has focused on low-value assembly processes rather than high-value R&D.
Yet the rise of the Turkish defense industry cannot be ignored. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, a think tank on armaments and arms control, has recognized Turkey’s presence in the defense market and included the country with emerging arms producers like South Korea, Singapore, Brazil and India.
“Turkey’s Aselsan (the country’s leading defense system producer) continues to increase their respective positions in the Top 100 following their first appearance in the 2011 rankings,” SIPRI reported in its 2014 study on the world's top 100 defense companies.
Aselsan jumped 22 places, to 65th in 2013 from 87th in 2012.
A similar list prepared by U.S.-based Defense News magazine in 2014 shows that Aselsan ranked 67th in the world’s top 100 defense firms. TAI has also risen to 80th in the list.
Although the exact number of Turkish people employed in the industry is remains secret, at least 500 firms thought to operate in the sector.
Turkish companies are hungry for more. “We have two companies among the top 100 but our objective is to have seven in the list,” Alis says. Turkish defense producers aim to boost exports to $2 billion in 2015 and to $25 billion by 2023.
Some wonder what brought this relative success in the highly competitive market of defense industry. Part of the answer lies with Turkey’s ambitious goal to become a regional and then a global power, Gurcan has acknowledged.
“Without political will, there would not be such growth,” he adds. Senior political leaders’ statements coupled with a surge in incentives for the defense sector reveal strong political backing for the industry.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan usually points to the importance of local defense projects such as tanks and drones. “Turkey has become a country that is able to produce its tanks, helicopters, communication satellites, indigenous rifles, rocket launchers and many others,” Erdogan said during a speech at the opening of new legislative year at the Turkish Parliament last October.
Money talks even louder: Turkey has spent US$135 million between 2006 and 2013, Ismet Yilmaz, the defense minister, disclosed last June.
Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher from SIPRI, believes that the change lies in the country’s ability to integrate foreign-sourced technology into its own weapon systems. This hybridization has allowed Turkish companies to reach international markets, he told The Anadolu Agency.
Atilla Sandikli, a former army colonel and now Associate Professor of International Relations at Istanbul-based Halic University, stresses the government’s support for the industry. A “game-changer” in the sector, Sandikli believes, was the government’s move to insist on co-production and technology transfer in defense tenders.
That priority has delayed purchase of long-range missiles. Turkey, a NATO member state since 1955, announced in 2013 it had decided on an FD-2000 missile defense system – worth US$3.4 billion – from China Precision Machinery Import and Export Corp. over systems from Italian, French and American companies.
Despite mounting criticism from NATO partners, Turkish officials asserted that what they were looking for was technology transfer and co-production instead of procurement of the complex system once and for all.
Ismail Demir, Turkey’s undersecretary for defense industries, defended the decision and said the priority was technology transfer. “Turkey wants that the missile system can be equipped with the latest technology after 10 or 15 years. That’s why we are seeking a technology transfer too,” Demir said last month.
Despite an impressive growth in recent years, Sandikli says that Turkey is at the beginning of a long road to become a prominent actor in the defense sector.
“Our capabilities in the research-and-development and production are new. The industry has just recently ended its crawling period,” Sandikli claims.
Defense expert Gurcan says Turkish companies should keep that momentum to be able to advance their capabilities. Sandikli is confident that the Turkish state and private sector will be able to keep that momentum alive.
“Turkish people have realized that the industry is important not only on the defense side but also on an economic level,” he says, adding: “After realizing that, the Turkish state and private sector’s appetite surged in this industry.”
The chairman of the defense exporters wants more state incentives to increase production and exports. Gurcan said further increases in the Turkish defense sector goes through introduction of U.S.-style tender process.
“Any company that meets the criteria for procurement should be able to enter into a bidding process,” he stressed. That move, he added, would open the door for Anatolian small and medium-sized enterprises, which could also break big companies’ dominance over the defense industry.
He asserted that Turkey does not lack human resources to advance its defense technology: “I know some young people that only request the government’s backing for their projects,” he says.
On a national level, Turkish companies are able to meet the Turkish army’s needs. Domestic companies can provide half of the Turkish military’s overall requirements. Turkey had depended on foreign companies for 67 percent of its military products until 10 years ago, Gurcan claims.
While advancing on the national defense market, on the global stage different challenges await Turkish companies: heavy competition; political problems and already-established markets by other companies.
On the global scale, Turkey remains “a small actor,” being in the same league with Norway and South Africa, according to SIPRI’s Wezeman: “Turkey has been successful in exporting 'low-end' weapons and military equipment.”
Wezeman says that what is important for the arms industry is that “Turkey has continuously increased its military expenditure, maintaining a relatively high demand for weapons sufficient to fund indigenous arms programmes based on foreign-sourced technology.”
Erdogan’s speech during the inauguration ceremony of a "Radar and Electronic Warfare Technology Center" is a further proof that the government will continue to expand its military expenditure. "We plan to eliminate external dependency on defense equipment supply with ongoing projects and investments until 2023," Erdogan said.
Figures and commitments indicate a promising future for Turkey’s defense industry. The true capabilities of the sector will only be fully known once ambitious projects – such as indigenous battle tanks and warships – roll off the production line.
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