Evaluating Turkey’s Defence Industry in Light of Japanese and Brazilian Cases

When the world politics has been shifting towards multipolarity Turkey's recent disobedient behaviors such as thinking to buy Chinese air defense systems, purchase of S-400 air defense systems from Russia, negative attitudes towards Israel angered many Americans and caused severe objections. These events revived the discussions about economic nationalism in industrial policies again. Turks still remember that American embargo on Turkey due to the Cyprus intervention in 1974. The crisis enabled Turkey to establish its own defense industry. The Turkish Armed Forces Strengthening Foundation (TSKGV) was established after the embargo. Turkish officials understood that it was necessary reduce the defense industry's dependence on imports. Economic nationalism was still dominant paradigm in the 1980s: many national defense companies, including the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), ASELSAN, İŞBİR, ASPİLSAN, HAVELSAN, and ROKETSAN came into life during those days. The year 2004 was a new turning point for Turkey to accelerate its emphasis on economic nationalism and improvements in defense industry. During the AK Party era Turkey has been displaying its desire for Turkey to achieve complete independence in defense sector, and to produce its own national tank, ship, helicopter, satellite and even war plane. Now Turkey is home to two of the world's 100 largest defense companies, Aselsan and TUSAS. Defense exports reached to $1.65 billion, and Turkey wants its defense exports to reach $25 billion a year. Having said all these positive developments about Turkey’s defense industry one must be cautious about potential dangers in the industrial development policies. For example, Japan's defense production model, which was portrayed as an exemplar of techno-nationalism, is now displaying structural limits. Japan now faces constrained defense budgets, poor procurement management, diminishing competency in military technologies. This article makes a comparative case analysis and explores potential weaknesses in Turkey’s defense industry and tries to answer the research question “what are the potential challenges Turkey might face in its development of defense industry?” Some probable answers include bureaucratic failures, misuse of public office, corruption practices, deficiencies in macro governance, building human capital, reaching international markets among others. Taking lessons from Japan and Brazil cases this paper will employ in-dept interviews with bureaucrats, private sector representatives, experts and politicians to find out potential impediments in the development of Turkey’s defense industry, particularly regarding high tech production.