How Türkiye got a developed military industry

The pre-election campaign before the first round of the presidential elections in Turkey proceeded according to a well-established pattern. The only opposition candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroglu, criticized the state of affairs in the country: in his campaign videos, he shook onions and talked about high food prices. And his main competitor, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, focused on demonstrating his achievements, among which the most important place is occupied by new products of the Turkish military-industrial complex (MIC).

Since the beginning of April, Erdogan has presented a number of large-scale national projects – from the world’s first light aircraft carrier with attack drones and a fifth-generation fighter to a new battle tank. And from April 27 to May 1, the authorities held on the territory of the Istanbul airport. Ataturk, a large-scale exhibition of military innovations Teknofest 2023. Over 2.5 million people attended the event over five days. Such calculations are given by Selcuk Bayraktar, Erdogan’s son-in-law and owner of the already world-famous Baykar Makina drone company. Erdogan himself, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Libyan Prime Minister Abdul-Hamid Dbeiba attended Teknofest 2023. It was the Bayraktar drones that, as stated, provided Azerbaijan with a victory over Armenia in the second Karabakh war in 2020.