25.07.2023
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey expected to reach $6 billion in arms sales in 2023, hoping for a nearly 36.3% rise from last year’s $4.4 billion. He made the statement at at the opening of Turkey’s largest defense fair.
“We have already achieved a record export level of $2.3 billion in the first half of the year,” Erdogan said in a video message to the International Defense Industry Fair 2023 (IDEF’23), held in Istanbul between July 25-28.
The Turkish defense and aeronautics sector’s export revenues passed the $4 billion mark in 2022, up from $3.2 billion in 2021. The sharp defense export rise is attributed mainly to aerospace and the country’s drones used by more than 30 countries.
Last week, Turkey’s leading exporter of armed drones, Baykar Technology, signed a deal with Saudi Arabia’s Defense Ministry to transfer technology and jointly produce its advanced Akinci drones. Haluk Bayraktar, the chairman of Baykar said the deal had been in the works for a year. Also, Haluk Gorgun, the newly appointed chairman of Turkey’s Defense Industries, speaking about the deal with Saudi Arabia, told CNN-TURK that it is the most significant export deal ever made in Turkey and that it is worth more than $3.1 billion.
While Saudi Arabia has opted for the high-altitude long-endurance Akinci (“raider”) drones, many countries went for the smaller and less expensive Bayraktar TB2s, used by Ukraine in fighting the Russian invasion. Bayraktar drones have since been on the wish list of many countries including NAT0 members Poland and Romania, Qatar and several African nations such as Nigeria and Niger.
