“Turkey’s Astonishing Rise as a Drone Power”. This is the title of an extensive report by Welt Online, which refers to Turkey’s attempt to reduce itself to a military force to be reckoned with Bayraktar drones. Among other things, he notes: “The Bayraktar drones, manufactured in Turkey, have already been used in Africa, the Middle East and the Caucasus – that is, where Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wanted to give geopolitical emphasis (…) Turkey has signed sales contracts for its popular drones with at least 13 countries, while Poland and Latvia have also recently expressed interest (…) In fact, Turkey is currently one of the most active drone powers in the world.This caught the West off guard, since no one counted on Turkey on the list of manufacturers of cutting-edge military technology (…) Countries such as the US and Israel refused to sell powerful combat drones to Turkey in the early 2000s. Consequently, Turkish engineers researched and developed their own technology.”
However, the story of the manufacturer behind Bayraktar TB2 is also interesting, as well as how they slowly evolved into a “national symbol”, as the newspaper describes them. “The manufacturer of the TB2s is the Bayrak family company, which was founded in the 1980s and is run by the Bayraktar brothers (…) While Haluk focuses on management, ambitious engineer Selçuk leads the drone program as technical director (…) In 2016 the Selcuk married Erdogan’s daughter Sumeyyeh.At the time the TB2s had only been in service with the Turkish military for a year, had relatively few flight hours and had just been tested in precision strikes.
However, in the following years, Turkey launched several controversial military attacks in northern Syria. The TB2s were used against the Kurdish PKK, against the forces of General Khalifa Haftar in Libya, against the supporters of Bashar al-Assad in Syria and also in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict against the armed forces of Armenia.”
Dimitra Kyranoudis
SOURCE: Deutsche Welle
Source: Capital
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