A crowd
of people gather around a full-scale model of Turkish Aerospace Industries'
TF-X at Paris Air Show on June 17, 2019. (Valerie Insinna/Staff)
ANKARA, Turkey — The official
numbers are impressive. In President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s narrative, the
number of Turkish defense industry programs rose from 62 in 2002 to 700 today.
In the same period, the number of defense and aerospace companies rose from 56
to 1,500. The government was administering $5.5 billion worth of programs then;
now this is at $75 billion. Local industry turnover rose from $1 billion to
$10.8 billion; and exports jumped from a mere $248 million to more than $3
billion.
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