While I agree with the gist of your post, I disagree with your opinions about the economy and the presumed historical plan for Turkiye to build their own aircraft. It might've been a long time dream but it wasn't a clear goal from the onset. According to Kotil, not so long ago after the last PO III F-16 rolled from TAI production line, they were scratching their heads at TAI what to do with TAI itself. There was no ambition nor a concrete plan what to do but eventually they started the UAV Anka project and it and some other license production projects like the T129, PO IV, AW-139 fuselage etc kept TAI alive long enough to make it what it is today.Ok I need to step in.
Just because Turkey hasn't built itself a name in arms industry doesn't mean its weapons are inferior or junk.
Would you really think that a NATO country WITH NATO STANDARDS that insists on building it's own weapons would even want to accept weapons that are inferior to what they already got?
You are right in the context of that drones got a lot (I mean A LOT) of PR, but other Turkish systems actually lack PR quite a lot. Foreigners usually tend to look down on Turkish weapons industry because they are currently the only serious Muslim (That's actually kinda racist) arms manufacturer (well, also Iran, but thats becausw of their conditions and they usually build low twch weapons outside of BMs, which any country that insists and dedicates time can do it as time goes by) and also because they started building some serious national hardware not so long ago.
But remember that people also used to look down on Israel and Korea back then, but now they are taken seriously as the time has gone by. The truth is, any newcomer will be seen as weak and little at the start and be taken seriously as time goes by and their weapons are proved to be effective in combat; which Turkish arms already have many times proved that in multiple wars
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Alright, let's come to the TF-X topic,
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People outside of Turkey doesn't know this much and think that the only reason Turkey is seriously pushing its limits is because of the F-35 crisis, but...
Take a look at these posters,
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The posters literally say; "Kendi uçağını kendin yap" - "Build your own plane."
The reality is;
Unofficially, the country actually had it's eyes on this project for quite a while, ever since the 70s, that's literally why TAI was established, that's why Turkey licence manufactured F-16s even back in 1984. And, they have worked towards that goal with starting from building capabilities.
Officially, the project has started in 15.12.2010 (that's 11 years ago!) and if the purpose of this project has been just for the propaganda purposes and impossible to achieve (like many others believe, with @Deino being the most vocal), why would Turkey pour 10s of billions of precious dollars in the project IN THIS F@CKING ECONOMY?! They'd have to be outright insane if they really are dead serious about it. Why would they build important facilities, hire thousands of engineers and other personnel (nationwide as well as worldwide) or do thousands of hours worth of engineering and R&D?...Unless...they are dead serious about it?
And when it comes to experience; experience of building and producing an aircraft, supersonic or subsonic... They have literally been building the necessary capacity for the past 40 years, I'm not going to repeat all the past projects they did, you can go TAI's website for that but in short they went through a similiar path as KAI.
When it comes to financing, I already mentioned that they seriously spend billions of dollars in this crappy economy they're in, and as the government actually spends an important part of its budget on all of these weapons projects, we can assume they pretty much have an open check for it.
But still, financing is pretty much the only part in the TF-X project that I'm pessimistic of. I'm confident they are going to be able to build the prototypes, overcome most if not all of the engineering problems that they are likely to face, but mass producing is an another story. But maybe the financial budget reserved for the F-35 could be used for that.
I'm mostly optimistic also because they managed to keep most of their promises till now even though many have laughed in their face and we've just started to see the projects come to fruition.
And as all the other countries around Turkey has invested heavily in their militaries (especially AF) Turkey has no chance other than to materialise the TF-X.
It's not related to the topic but when it comes to the recent F-16 modernisation and acqusition news, the AF has always planned to modernise the F-16 fleet to the V variant, whether the F-35s came or not.
Anyway I hope my post will provide important insights for you guys, I haven't even gotten into the technical side yet but I'm still mostly optimictic about this project. Will this project succeed? We'll see it in time.
But now with the right political ambition and new leadership (Kotil) at TAI (remember, the Hurjet is a TAI financed project), TAI has reinvented itself and is aiming to become a top 10 aviation company. Something that was unthinkable at the turn of the millennium.
And about the economy, the economy is growing as one of the fastest in the world, exports are breaking records every year, if not every month and there is a huge domestic industrialization going on. Things are looking economically good for Turkiye in the long run.
