First made public in 2010, "Vision 2023", conceived by the Office of the Prime Minister, involved a plethora of objectives designed to make Turkey an independent power that cannot be ignored, one hundred years after the creation of the Republic, said Ã"degreesmile Bouvier of Orient XXI. In this respect, the armaments sector is seen as one of the spearheads of this ambitious project: a symbol of sovereignty if ever there was one, the Turkish armed forces must be equipped with material 100% made in Turkey.
Aside from this political symbolism, the authorities are seeking strategic autonomy for more pragmatic reasons: from 1975 to 1978, at the time of the Cyprus crisis, the United States declared an embargo on the sale of arms to Turkey. On account of the asphyxiation of Turkish armed forces caused by this embargo, Ankara decided it was time to develop its own armaments industry.
The best symbol of Turkey's triumph on the military industrial front is its extraordinary success in the area of militarized drones. From the armed drone Bayraktar TB2 to the surveillance drone Akinci, Turkey has become a specialist in these unmanned aircraft thanks to engineer Selà §uk Bayraktar, now a national hero and President Erdogan's son-in-law. From the coasts of Libya to the Syrian plains, by way of the mountains of Iraq or of Nagorno Karabakh, the drones have enabled Turkey and its allies to win the day on the battlefield with efficiency, rapidity and a minimum number of causalities.
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