The publication Defense News reports that the company BMC is one of the leaders of the Turkish military-industrial complex, is going to move some plants and to build a new plant.
Turkish Minister of science, industry and technology Fikri Isik stated that the Turkish government has decided to provide 222 hectares of the company’s BMC as part of its plans to expand production.
Thus, the basic BMC production will be moved from Izmir on the West coast in the city of Sakarya, and, according to isika, the new plant will be operational just two years, and the civil work will be spent 430 million dollars of state subsidies.
It is noteworthy that the BMC owns Sancak etem, who, according to Defense News, there is long-standing and close ties with Turkish President Recep Erdogan.
The publication notes that the company Sanaka is one of the main contractors of the multi-billion project on the development and production of first Turkish tank “Altay”.
In this regard, it should be noted that in Turkey recently there has been a boom of military contracts – ranging from the establishment of national tank production, which, despite all efforts, has resulted in only two exhibits “Altai”, moving from one international event to another, to the projects on creation of its own missile defense systems and air defense.
Not only that, these projects are so complex that it is obviously unbearable for the Turkish industry, so each of them has a very expensive foreign participation in the development of individual components for the Turkish economy, is now experiencing not the best times, a very heavy load.
And, as a result, the friends of Erdogan get sauce under the military is a very serious state subsidies and investments, and the state for it has a number of costly projects associated with the obligations under foreign trade contracts, each of which is unlikely to be brought to practical implementation.
Leading researcher of the Center for Asian and African studies of the HSE Alexey Samples believes that this unfortunate event is part of global practice.
“The fact that the military contracts usually are closed, respectively, estimates and costs it is impossible to verify, which is a very corrupt part of budgets of any country – whether it’s Turkey, Pakistan or France. So, there is nothing surprising in the fact that such contracts are allocated in Ankara, especially in the context of modern Turkey”, – sums of Samples.
Another question, according to Obraztsova, Turkey’s economy currently is in poor condition, and difficult to understand, expects its political leadership, arguing about how to run such complex and expensive projects.
“Of course, all of this is designed primarily for external, journalistic effect. After all, at this point, from the weapon of own production Turkey uses only self-propelled howitzers, which, of course, reliable, but it’s not a weapon of last generation. The same can be said about the tank “Altai”, about which more is said, but which is yet to be seen, not only in business, but even on any test,” says Samples.
Of course, all these contracts are “sitting” close to the Erdogan people, but according to Obraztsova, such military industrial activity of Ankara, also due to the realization of the Turkish President that everything happening in Syria and in General in the middle East is the General idea of fragmentation and segmentation of the region.
“It’s the same idea that works in Europe and in North Africa, when the transition from the idea of integration of States, which dominated after the Second world war, the idea of segmentation, and in this sense, Turkey is very vulnerable. And in terms of territorial challenges with neighbours, in terms of the Kurdish zone, together with other related problems,” – said Samples.
Samples believes that this saber-rattling Ankara wants to show its willingness to respond militarily to the current challenges of the time. It is clear that in all these projects – more words than deeds, but the political leadership of Turkey considers such action is a very effective policy.
