Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, left, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman shake hands during a welcome ceremony in Jeddah. (AP)
Metropolis Desk-
Following the completion of a substantial defense export agreement, relations between Ankara and Riyadh are strengthening, according to observers.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed several agreements with Saudi Arabia late on Monday, which many experts saw as sending a signal about the future of defense cooperation between the two nations. Erdogan was on an official tour of the Gulf this week.
They included a crucial defense cooperation pact as well as a drone supply agreement between the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Baykar, a Turkish maker of defense equipment.
These agreements, according to Saudi military Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, are significant since they are meant to improve the readiness of the Kingdom’s armed forces and strengthen its manufacturing and military capacities.
The deal was the largest defense and aviation export contract a Turkish company has ever signed, according to Baykar CEO Haluk Bayraktar. Erdogan’s son-in-law Selcuk Bayraktar, who is also his brother, serves as the company’s chief technical officer and board chairman.
Unmanned aerial vehicles with laser-guided missiles that cost about the same as American and Israeli drones are known as Bayraktar TB2 drones, which are produced by Baykar. Turkiye will also sell an unspecified quantity of Bayraktar Akinci medium-altitude, long-endurance armed drones as part of the agreement for Saudi air and naval forces to utilize them.
The agreement also includes programs for cooperative production and technology transfers to help both countries’ capacities for high-tech development progress. Another agreement, with ambitions to build the payloads domestically in the Kingdom, is anticipated to be completed for the procurement of Turkish smart munitions and other payloads.
“This significant development is surely the start of a new era in Turkish-Saudi relations,” Sine Ozkarasahin, a defense analyst at the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies (also known as EDAM), an independent think tank in Istanbul, told Arab News.
She believes that in the future we can expect “more collaboration between Ankara and Riyadh in the defense industry, in segments such as air defense and missiles, but more prominently in smart weapons, such as autonomous and uncrewed systems and other (artificial intelligence-driven) technologies.”
“Both countries are heavily committed to (research and development) in the military sector,” she continued. The Saudis are currently one of the pioneering nations spearheading the AI breakthrough in the Middle East, as demonstrated in their Vision 2030 whitepaper.
Deals like this also show that they are aware of Turkiye’s rapidly developing defense-technological industrial base’s potential.
Turkiye has been selling drones that are domestically created and produced, particularly those made by Baykar, to friendly nations with which Ankara wants to improve relations for the past four years.
A variety of combat zones, including Syria, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, and Nagorno-Karabakh, have shown the effectiveness of armed Turkish drones, such as the Bayraktar TB2.
The TB2 in particular has established a well-deserved reputation as a highly capable and economical platform, contributing significantly to the development and expansion of the Turkish defense aeronautics sector.
In the early phases of the conflict with Russia, Ukrainian forces employed the flagship Turkish drone for strategic communication and were credited with aiding in halting the Russian advance. Turkiye has agreements for the co-production of unmanned aerial vehicles between 2019 and 2023 with several nations, including Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and now Saudi Arabia.
The Kingdom is the seventh nation to purchase Akinci drones from Baykar, and as the list of export clients grows, the latest agreement means that Turkiye has successfully expanded its drone sales to cover all of the wealthy Gulf monarchies. The deal with Riyadh also serves as a significant signal that relations between the two countries are improving.
Meanwhile, Baykar is developing an unmanned fighter jet, a project that highlights Turkiye’s continuing commitment to advancing its capabilities in the unmanned aviation sector.
Leo Peria-Peigne, a research fellow at the Security Studies Center of the French Institute of International Relations in Paris, said that after several years of chilly relations, ties between Riyadh and Ankara are warming, and Turkish authorities are actively seeking to use armaments agreements as part of this process, not only in dealings with the Kingdom but other countries such as the UAE and Egypt.
As he said to Arab News, “Right after the Kingdom’s boycott on Qatar ended, rumors regarding a prospective arms contract between (Riyadh and Ankara) surfaced, especially on UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). These suspicions were exploited as proof of an improvement in relations.
Additionally, as the majority of the profit on these transactions is made from training and maintenance services, an armaments contract is also a sort of assurance that both countries would maintain positive relations for a while. According to Peria-Peigne, Turkey’s defense sector offers an efficient approach to draw in an influx of foreign currency while the country’s economy battles hyperinflation.
The knock-on industrial benefits to Saudi Arabia anticipated from such agreements, according to Peria-Peigne, will aid the Kingdom in diversifying its economy in line with the goals of its Vision 2030 agenda, which calls for half of the country’s military equipment to be locally produced by the end of the decade.
Source- Arab News
