by Burak Bekdil
Erdogan's chickens come home to roost
The Altay Turkish battle tank, Istanbul 2019, photo via Wikipedia
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,512, March 31, 2020
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s
flagrant deviations from western democratic norms and badly calculated,
neo-Ottoman zigzagging between NATO and non-NATO state actors have left
Turkey deprived of critical air defenses, fighter jets, tanks, and
other systems at a time when Ankara is giving signals that it wants to play hardball with a rising number of regional and other adversaries.
The Turkish government first learned to use
multibillion-dollar arms programs as leverage in its foreign policy
calculus in the 1990s: we buy French (or German) to boost our EU
accession process; we buy Israeli to enhance our strategic partnership;
we buy US to maintain American political support, and so on. Nearly
three decades later, Turkey is no longer an off-the-shelf buyer of arms,
but foreign policy deliberations still play a major role in defense
procurement (and vice versa). Now, however, major foreign policy
miscalculations appear to have deprived the Turkish military of critical
weapons systems.
It is true that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s
ambitious campaign to design, develop, and build indigenous arms systems
has been successful in boosting the local defense industry,
particularly in the production of sensationally successful drone
systems, naval platforms, armored vehicles, and smart ammunition—all of
which were direct acquisitions from foreign buyers in the 1990s and
early 2000s.
Turkey can now boast that it has developed locally
built helicopter gunships, trainer aircraft, and a landing platform
dock, all containing various levels of foreign technology transfer and
licensing. Locally produced systems meet 70% of the military’s
requirements, compared to 35% in 2002. In the same period, the number of
defense procurement programs rose from 66 to over 700, or from $5.5
billion to $70 billion in contract value. Similarly, defense and
aerospace industry turnover went from less than $1 billion to over $9
billion, and exports rose from $248 million to $2.7 billion. In 2019
there were five Turkish arms manufacturers on the global list of the top
100.
These figures undeniably represent a success
story—but against that impressive backdrop, Turkey’s procurement system
appears to have fallen victim to major foreign policy miscalculations,
particularly in the past five years. The problems all concern
technologies in which Turkey’s domestic capabilities have failed to
achieve the desired end product.
Air defense
Turkish military planners first recognized the
country’s “immediate need for long-range air and anti-missile defense
systems” in the early 1990s, which led to a military program with an
“urgent/top priority” tag. In 2013 Erdoğan shocked his NATO allies when
his government announced that it had selected CPMIEC, a Chinese
contender, for the construction of a sophisticated air defense
architecture. Under western pressure, contract negotiations with CPMIEC
failed in 2015, and Ankara invited fresh bids from US (Patriot),
European (SAMP/T), and Russia (S-400) suppliers. Ankara again shocked
its western allies by selecting the Russian S-400 system, which it
initially claimed it could integrate into the (mostly) US and NATO radar
assets on Turkish soil. (Turkish officials later had to admit the S-400
could only be deployed as a standalone system.)
The $2.5 billion S-400 program would be the
beginning of a broad, prosperous, and longer-term military procurement
partnership between Ankara and Moscow. In 2019, despite warnings from
NATO and the US, Turkey took delivery of the Russian S-400 system.
Erdoğan said his government would negotiate a second batch of S-400s,
and an acquisition of the more advanced S-500 system is now being
discussed.
NATO member states are hoping Ankara will leave
the S-400 system in hangars and never make it operational, but the
Turkish government insists the system will become operational in April.
If this does occur, Turkey will be using a long-range air defense system
nearly three decades after it decided to procure it “urgently.”
A next-generation fighter jet
In the mid-2000s Erdoğan’s over-ambitious defense
procurement bureaucracy began to toy with the idea of designing and
building a “100% Turkish fighter jet” to end Turkey’s dependency on
western (specifically US) suppliers. Funds were allocated and the TF-X
program took off with great fanfare. The first indigenous Turkish
fighter jet was to be in the air in 2023, the centenary of the Turkish
Republic. As Tusaş Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) went deeper into
the TF-X program, it became clear that a 100% Turkish aircraft in the
air by 2023 was a pipe dream.
TAI signed a pre-concept design agreement with
British Aerospace for the “100% Turkish” aircraft. But the planned
aircraft does not have an engine; Turkey will have to depend on a
foreign engine supplier. Procurement planners had to silently move the
production target from 2023 to 2025-26. Analysts think even 2030 could
be too optimistic. According to some analysts, the most realistic target
is “never.”
While Turkey was investing in the TF-X, it was
also a member of the US-led multinational consortium building the
next-generation F-35 Lightning II fighter jet. But because Turkey
insisted on operating a Russian air defense system on NATO territory,
its membership in the F-35 (Joint Strike Fighter) program was suspended.
The first two F-35s built for the Turkish Air Force remain at a site in
the US.
Ankara said it would sue the consortium to get its
money back and take the matter to international arbitration for
resolution, but according to the multinational F-35 contract, no partner
can take a consortium decision to international arbitration. That is a
legally binding clause in the contract Turkey signed and cannot be
overruled by Ankara.
Erdoğan responded by announcing that Turkey is
willing to turn its back on the consortium and purchase the Su-35 or the
more advanced Su-57 fighter aircraft from Russia, its new military
partner. This is another mistake. Moscow initially said it is prepared
to sell fighter jets to Turkey—but by “sell” it means “off-the-shelf,”
with no technology transfer. In the F-35 program, Turkey would have been
an equal partner.
Worse yet, Turkey and Russia have hugely divergent
interests in Syria. Their unbridgeable differences over the future of
that Arab state have brought Ankara and Moscow to a military crisis in
the strategically important Syrian town of Idlib, where Syrian forces,
with Russian air support, killed 34 Turkish soldiers on February 29.
That incident forcefully reminded Ankara of the bitter truth that there
are limits to any Turkish-Russian partnership.
Ankara does not know whether it should activate
the S-400 system or, indeed, whether it can trust the Russians at all.
Will the Russians sell fighters to Turkey and share technology? Or has
Ankara invested too much on an emerging bloc with Russia? Was it all too
good to be true? Probably.
Next-generation battle tanks
One of the most ambitious “100% Turkish” arms
programs is the Altay, Turkey’s first homemade tank. After a private
Turkish company built four prototypes of the Altay, the Erdoğan
government awarded the serial production contract, worth billions of
dollars, to one of Erdoğan’s business cronies.
On the technological level, this first Turkish
tank has a serious problem: it has no engine or transmission system.
These are not easy problems to solve.
Over the past couple of years, Altay executives
have been rushing from one foreign supplier of engine and transmission
systems to another without success. The Altay was originally designed to
run on a German power pack (i.e., engine + transmission). But
unfortunately for Ankara, Germany has persistently refused to issue
export licenses for the critical parts that would make the Altay run on
the battlefield. This is because of Turkey’s exponentially widening
democratic deficit, which has ratcheted up European distrust of Ankara.
Erdoğan thought he could have his cake and eat it too: simultaneously
run Turkey with an iron fist, make Turkey an EU member, and have access
to critical arms systems made in the democratic parts of the world.
The Altay program, like the air defense project,
dates back to the mid-1990s. If some miracle happens and Altay’s serial
production begins in 2020, first deliveries will still not enter the
inventory before 2024. In other words, as in the case of the air defense
system, Turkey will possess domestically produced tanks more than three
decades after it decided it needed them.
Erdoğan’s bold deviations from western democratic
norms and badly calculated, neo-Ottoman zigzagging between NATO and
non-NATO state actors have left Turkey deprived of critical air
defenses, fighter jets, tanks, and other systems at a time when Ankara
is giving signals that it wants to play hardball with a rising number of
regional and other adversaries.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based columnist. He regularly writes for the Gatestone Institute and Defense News and is a fellow at the Middle East Forum. He is also a founder of the Ankara-based think tank Sigma.
Source: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/turkey-nato-weapons/
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