By Janet Ekstract ISTANBUL – The Turkish defense sector has transformed its military-industrial complex from a sector that relied on foreign parts and licensed production in 2002, into a massive, self-reliant ecosystem, earning over $20 billion in revenue with more than 3,500 companies by 2026. Certain factors influenced the Turkish government to realize that reliance on foreign arms for survival was a liability. This was borne out in the 1974 U.S. arms embargo after the Cyprus intervention, which led to forming the Foundation for Strengthening the Turkish Armed Forces (TSKGV) and companies like ASELSAN (electronics), ROKETSAN (missiles) and TUSAS/TAI (aerospace). In the 80s and 90s, Turkiye primarily assemble Western gear under license but the real leap happened in 2004 when the procurement strategy fundamentally shifted to finding out how to own the Intellectual Property (IP) rights on certain technologies. The Turkish plan was that if a foreign contractor refused to transfer technology, the contract was canceled.
Turkiye did something that multiple authoritarian and state-dominated systems could not solve: it combined large, steady, state-backed corporate foundations with agile, private, family-run tech firms like Baykar. The concept was that state foundations provide long-term capital and heavy infrastructure while private firms provide quick innovation, bypassing bureaucratic inertia. As a result, Baykar has become one of the world’s top drone-makers with multiple countries employing its drone technology. In contrast, Gulf states relied on oil wealth to import high-end, finished products. In this model, buying weapons was as much a diplomatic insurance policy as a military procurement strategy. The fact is that when countries spend billions on American F-15s or other aircraft, they are buying an implied security umbrella from Washington. If they stopped importing weapons, they would risk weakening the critical Western diplomatic guarantees.
Unlike the Arab world, Turkiye spent a century building a gargantuan secular industrial base, a robust automotive sector and highly competitive technical universities (METU, ITU). Meanwhile, many Arab states lacked this type of multi-layered industrial base. In order to build advanced tactical weapons, a country must have a domestic civilian supply chain supplying advanced machine tools, specialized chemicals and software engineers. In addition, constructing a weapon system requires a unique institutional culture. There must be a high tolerance for engineering failure, a decentralized private tech sector and low-level engineering autonomy. Many militaries in the Arab world, historically featured highly centralized command structures that at times, discourage independent initiative or bottom-up technological experimentation. Further, in spite of massive defense spending, heavy reliance on foreign contractors for maintenance, logistics and software upgrades, limited the organic transfer of deep engineering know-how to local citizens.
Thanks to a flurry of Turkish diplomacy and Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, more heads of state began visiting Turkiye and along with its participation in a number of regional organizations – Turkiye was able to gain the trust of nations who had previously been skeptical. A pivotal moment was the Turkish mediation regarding the Black Sea transport and getting grain to much needed countries in Africa, in the early days of Russia’s war against Ukraine. These actions cemented Turkiye’s global standing with its European and American allies as well as its Arab neighbors. Turkiye has continued to prove that it is not only capable of effective mediation in regional conflicts but that it is able to maintain the type of stance that allows it to understand conflict on both sides. It is precisely this attitude that other nations and the EU have lauded and has made them take a much closer look at just how invaluable Turkish defense and its strategic location, really is.
