Turkey is going to completely abandon importing defense industry products in 2023, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said today at the opening of the exhibition IDEF-2015 in Istanbul.
When the country's ruling Justice and Development Party started political activities in 2002, Turkey's dependence on imports of military equipment was 80%. "Now we are producing 54%. But our goal is to get rid of dependence on import products in the defense industry," Erdogan stressed, adding that last year the production capacity of the Turkish defense industry exceeded $5 billion.
