Tom Waldwyn
Turkiye’s defence-industrial relationships with key European partners have changed over time. In the1980s Turkiye pursued joint ventures with foreign firms to procure equipment and develop defence-industrial capability. Although the most significant of these were the agreements with US firms to set up F-16 fighter-aircraft assembly in Turkiye, many projects were pursued with European companies, including for aircraft, guided weapons and communications equipment. From 2004, Turkiye changed its approach to focus more on acquiring locally developed equipment. Many of these platforms were either designed with assistance from foreign firms or were fitted with their subsystems, although over the past two decades Turkiye has been seeking to replace the latter with its own systems.
Over the last four decades, and in some cases for even longer, French, Italian, Dutch, Spanish and British companies have been important in supporting Turkish defence-industrial objectives. Today, however, some of those companies are less involved than they were previously, due to a series of political disagreements between Ankara and their respective national governments. The main causes of discord have been Turkiye’s military operations in Syria since 2016, particularly the 2019 Operation Peace Spring, and its acquisition of the Russian Almaz-Antey S-400 air-defence system in 2017. Due to these political differences, France’s and the Netherlands’ levels of defence-industrial engagement with Turkiye are now at historic low points. By contrast, although Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom share many of these concerns and have at times limited defence exports to Turkiye, they largely seek to engage with Turkiye as an important NATO ally that has a key role in security matters in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. This includes seeking defence-industrial opportunities, such as the design support for Turkiye’s Anadolu amphibious assault ship and Kaan fighter-aircraft programmes provided by Spanish company Navantia and the UK’s BAE Systems, respectively.
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