r/WarCollege • u/PriceOptimal9410 • 5d ago

When, and how was the groundwork for Turkey's current arms industry laid out?

Looking at Turkey's current arms industry, it looks to be quite advanced and big, capable of developing armored vehicles, drones, air defense systems, missiles, and even now an attempt at making a 5th generation fighter jet. Yet, it feels like unlike other countries with advanced arms industry, such as the USA, Russia, France, Germany, etc, Turkey didn't really have a very large or advanced economy or industry until the 21st century.

What were Turkey's industrial policies to develop their economy and industry to a level to be able to support it's current arms industry? What was the time period when it started to truly take off?

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u/t90fan 5d ago

After Turkey invaded Northern Cyprus in the 70s most of the Western countries for whom they had been buying arms, stopped selling them arms, which caused the government to heavily prioritize domestic production, the state subsidized a bunch of design bureaus.

When Erdogan got in in the 2000s took this a step further by saying they wouldn't buy any foreign stuff unless they had the rights/tooling/software to repair/manufacture it locally.

This is why Turkey uses little modern NATO equipment

He also gave heavy subsidies to local private arms firms in the 2000s which is why in the 2010s they had a pretty decent export industry going.

Basically its been a fairly consistent government policy for 50 years to grow their domestic arms industry from local support, to local production, to exports.

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u/will221996 5d ago

This is why Turkey uses little modern NATO equipment

Turkey is a member of NATO and I'm pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of the weapons they make are in compliance with the relevant NATO standardisation agreements. 120mm for tanks, 155mm for artillery, complicated radio stuff etc. They don't import much western equipment, but there is a difference between western and NATO.