I could give you the benefit of doubt regarding corruption in the other cases but not in the case of Kaan. Kaan is wanted by the highest level, President Prabowo himself wants it (and other Turkish systems). No possibility for an acquisition officer to force such a large project onto the President himself for self-enrichment.
President Prabowo Subianto may not be personally interested in self-enrichment at this point in his career, but if he is unwilling to let his proteges, allies and loyalists who now occupy key post beneath him enrich themselves – as their predecessors did and as he permitted them to do so in his previous capacity as the Indonesian defense minister – then he is not going to be in office for long.
Subianto was appointed to the post of defense minister in 2019 by incumbent President Joko Widodo after conceding the presidential race to him, and was effectively given the job by Widodo (reportedly along with the promise to support Subianto in the following presidential election in 2024) as a "peace offering" largely intended to placate the Indonesian military (which had previously removed Indonesia's first president, Sukarno, from power in favor of Subianto's late father-in-law Suharto).
Things were actually pretty ugly between Widodo and Subianto beforehand with
:
"We have declared (victory) because we got evidence of widespread cheating at the village, sub-district and district levels across Indonesia," Prabowo told reporters, minutes after Widodo declared victory at a separate news conference.
Obviously, Widodo took the threat of a potential military coup seriously, otherwise a sitting president wouldn't have been so magnanimous with a major political rival who had publicly accused him of systematic electoral fraud.
No one — including Prabowo Subianto — can secure and maintain
that kind of loyalty and support from a military like Indonesia's unless they're willing to indulge established norms, including patronage systems.
He's in power because he makes sure his guys are not only well fed, but better fed than they would be under anyone else.
To be fair, Subianto is almost certainly principally pursuing this deal to create new "tributaries" to reward loyalists and sustain patronage networks that contributed to his recent ascension to the Indonesian presidency, especially given what reasonable timelines for Kaan deliveries to the Indonesian Air Force tend to look like.
Same could be said of the KF-21 with F414 engines...
That should tell you just how serious the Indonesians were about the KF-21, and how serious they are now about the TAI Kaan.
Anything could happen but you have to break an egg to eat an omelet.
And what metaphoric egg would Turkey and/or Indonesia be breaking here?
