He said that external pressures and arms embargoes particularly increased after Turkey's 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation and once again revealed the need for a self-sufficient defense industry.
According to Carnegie Endowment, Turkey's defense industry has boomed in the last decade. In 2010, Turkey had one company on the list of Top 100 Global Defense Companies. Presently it has sevenmore companies than Israel, Russia, Sweden and Japan combined. Turkey's share of arms imports from 2015 to 2019 decreased by 48 percent compared to the preceding five-year period.
The country has transitioned from importing 70 percent of its military hardware to 30 percent. Concurrently, the Turkish arms industry grew from $1 billion in 2002 to $11 billion in 2020, more than $3 billion of which were exports, making Turkey the fourteenth largest global defense exporter.
From 2010 to 2019 the country sold war material to 28 nations. During that period, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan accounted for 50% of Turkish exports.
"We are one of the ten countries capable of designing, building and maintaining their own warships," President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄŸan said on January 23, 2021, at the launching of the destroyer TCG Istanbul.
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