On The Outside Looking In: Turkiye’s Peripheral Role in European Defence-industrial Collaboration Since the End of the Cold War

Karl Dewey, Haena Jo, Fenella McGerty, Ester Sabatino & Tom Waldwyn

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Since the end of the Cold War, Turkiye and other European states have had to grapple with an ever-changing economic and security context. While this has incentivised industrial consolidation, joint programmes and the creation of cooperation mechanisms among many European states, Turkiye has almost always been on the outside.

In the late 1990s, reduced defence spending in Europe and mergers in the US drove some of the largest European defence manufacturers to respond with their own consolidation process. This took place largely in the aerospace domain, where costs were higher, and led to the creation of multinational firms such as Airbus, AgustaWestland and MBDA. This rush towards consolidation by European firms had largely ended by 2001, and most of the later attempts at merging large firms resulted in failure. By contrast, the key elements of Turkiye’s defence industry had already been created and consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s. From the 1980s, Turkish companies cooperated with European and other foreign firms through joint ventures in Turkiye, before abandoning that strategy from 2004 onwards and instead pursuing indigenous designs, often with foreign subcontractors. These approaches have resulted in a far more capable Turkish defence industry than was previously the case.