After cancelling a multibillion-dollar long-range missile defense system contract process with China, Turkey decided to launch its own project to build the system.
Turkey's defense authority sent offers to all countries with advanced technology to build new generation a long-range missile system for co-production with Turkish defense companies.
Turkish defense companies are already producing short- and mid-range ballistic missiles such as the J-600T Yıldırım, SOM next-generation high-precision Cruise Missile, HISAR (surface to air missile system) and laser-guided Cirit missile, but are not yet capable of producing long-range missile systems.
Defense sources said the Turkish government had already commissioned missile maker ROKETSAN and military electronics specialist ASELSAN, Turkey's biggest defense firm, to go ahead with the program.
Both state-controlled companies have almost completed infrastructural development for the new system production.
The sources also said Turkey is negotiating with some Western long-range air and missile defense system producers, including Italian-French Eurosam who expressed their interest to launch the co-production in Turkey.
In November last year, President Erdoğan publicly announced that the Defense Industry Executive Committee canceled the $3.4 billion long-range missile defense project tender, which was provisionally awarded to China in 2013, in order to focus on development of long-range missile defense system developed by indigenous means.
He said that Turkey has some world-ranked defense industry to continue the project of building a “national and domestic long-range" missile system.
Turkey's defense industry has made significant achievements in recent years as they not only producing to meet the domestic requirements but to export them.
The local content ratio, the extent to which requirements are met locally, rose to 55 percent in 2014, and as the next phase the country aims to reduce external dependence on critical subsystems, components and technologies determined in line with the requirements.
Turkey's defense exports increased to $1.6 billion last year which the government intends to boost to $25 billion by 2023. Turkey is also planning to spend around $70 billion on military equipment until 2023.
