Turkiye’s Defence Industry: Which Way Forward?

Çağlar Kurç, Sıtkı Egeli, Arda Mevlütoğlu & Serhat Güvenç

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Turkiye’s defence industry is directly impacted by the country’s foreign-policy orientation, and now finds itself at a critical juncture. Decisions taken in the next few years will shape the future of its armaments sector for decades to come. There are two crucial issues for poli­cymakers to assess: which countries should be Turkiye’s closest partners, and which defence-industrial sectors should be prioritised.

There are broadly five possible foreign-policy direc­tions that Ankara could take. Each has its own historical roots, whether recent or more distant. The five direc­tions can be categorised as ‘Isolationist’, ‘New Horizons’, ‘Shifting Course’, ‘Hedging’ and ‘Return to the West’.

An Isolationist approach would be the most damag­ing for Turkiye’s defence industry, placing it in a simi­lar bracket to those of Iran and North Korea. Because the industry is highly integrated into the Western defence-industrial ecosystem, severing relations with Western partners would severely reduce the country’s defence-industrial capacity.

A New Horizons approach would build on the engagement with the Global South – principally the Middle East, Africa and Asia – that began in the mid-1960s and has been built on, more recently, by military diplomacy and defence exports. It is highly likely that this will remain a strand of Turkish policy going forward.