Turkish defense companies helping to build F-35 stealth fighter jets are set to lose work worth billions of dollars after Washington said it was removing Turkey from the program over its purchase of a Russian missile defense system.
Eight Turkish firms have been involved in producing the advanced fighter jets, supplying hundreds of items including parts for cockpit display systems and landing gear, on contracts the Pentagon said would have been worth $9 billion over the course of the program.
The head of Turkey’s Defense Industry Directorate acknowledged on Thursday that the U.S. decision to move the work elsewhere - and the potential for additional U.S. sanctions - would be a setback for those companies.
Ismail Demir said the losses would be only temporary, arguing that the companies could emerge stronger in the long run. But analysts said the move was a major blow to firms which had worked on the jet production for a decade, and would also limit Turkey’s access to new defense technology.
“I don’t know how companies will try to compensate for this, as they have been part of an established production chain since 2007,” Sinan Ulgen, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe and a former Turkish diplomat, told Reuters.
Turkish companies involved in the program are Roketsan, Havelsan, Alp Aviation, Ayesas, Kale Aerospace, Tubitak-SAGE, the Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), and the Turkish leg of the Dutch Fokker Elmo, according to the F-35 official website.
None of the companies were immediately available to comment.
Demir said they would evaluate how to compensate for their losses. Kale Group said in April that if Turkey were to be excluded from the F-35 project, any lost sales would be offset by turning to civil aviation.
But Ulgen said that finding swift alternatives to such highly specialized work was not easy.
“What can a factory that produces a part for the body of the F-35 do? What can it change into, where can it go? ... This isn’t the automotive sector, where you make a part for a BMW and then sell it to Ford when there is a change,” Ulgen said.
Unal Cevikoz, Deputy Chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party, put the value of contracts that would be canceled at $12 billion and said many jobs were at stake.
“These firms have almost 30,000 employees. What are these people going to do?” he said in a statement.
Keep comparing China to Turkey. Either you don't know anything about the two countries or you have some ulterior motive. Turkey does not have money, human capital or know-how, period. There is literately zero chance they can develop TF-X. They may develop smt like a Grippen if they can get a lot of direct help from others but it will be a project like tejas destined to failure from the inception. Look at any project Turkey claims as their own development. They all have their critical sub-systems imported.