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Turkey creates legal basis for military hardware cooperation with Saudis
Turkey has been making vigorous efforts to boost its still poor defense industry market through joint manufacturing projects and to increase the ability of its domestic defense market to manufacture its own products.
Turkey and Saudi Arabia signed the agreement on May 24 in Ankara to cooperate in military training as well as in technical and scientific fields. Turkish Defense Minister Vecdi Gönül said he was pleased the two countries had signed a military agreement after a long period of negotiation.
Turkey now has the necessary legal basis to enter the Saudi defense market with a military cooperation agreement recently signed with this country |
The agreement was signed by Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. İlker Başbuğ and visiting Saudi Arabian Deputy Minister of Defense and Aviation Prince Khalid Bin Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.
Gönül talked to Today’s Zaman about the prospects of defense industry cooperation with Saudi Arabia following the signing of the agreement. Three subcommittees between local Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), Aselsan and the Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation (MKE) and their Saudi counterparts will be set up to explore the possibilities of defense industry cooperation, he said.
“It is too early to say specifically on which projects the two countries will cooperate. Subcommittees will explore the options. But at least the newly signed agreement has set up the legal basis for cooperation,” he added.
Although Saudi Arabia earmarks a high budget for defense, Gönül said, Jeddah has mostly bought military hardware off the shelf from Western countries.
A cooperative project has been in operation for two years between Saudi Arabia and Turkey involving the modernization of several hundred US-made M113 Armored Personnel Vehicles (APV) by the Turkish company FNSS at a plant built in this country, the Turkish defense minister said.
“For example, another model is TAI’s modernization of F-16 fighters for Jordan. Some of those jets are upgraded at TAI in the presence of Jordanian engineers. The remaining F-16s are modernized in Jordan. Therefore, Jordanian engineers have learned how to maintain and upgrade F-16s. We want to apply a similar model in Saudi Arabia, too. It does not necessarily have to be the F 16 project as with Jordan but in any project on which the Turkish-Saudi subcommittees agree,” said Gönül.
The military cooperation agreement will also enable the joint training of Turkish and Saudi officers, Gönül said.
Prince Al Saud stated that a good cooperation strategy had been set up between Turkey and Saudi Arabia, describing the beginning of military cooperation between the two countries as very important.
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