Will Turkey ever launch its own satellite?
Communication is a very subtle art. When I get news from Turkish sources I always have a feeling that there are many things untold about the stories. This feeling is not necessarily because of the current government’s attitude toward newspapers, it was always so. We always knew that we were being deceived, only with this government it has intensified. In the past, the peak of this national deception could have been felt in the aftermath of a national game that we lost. The previous generation of journalists always tried to show us a brighter side of everything, even devastation at the hands of Germans for example, with headings like “We lost but we played better,” or “For Turkey to beat Germany, we had to beat the referee as well.”
The same feeling crept up again when I watched the news and listened to our prime minister talking about Göktürk-2. The prime minister said, “We did what could only be dreamed about before.” All the media outlets screamed that this was incredible. They broadcasted for hours about how Turkey is in a different league now. However, the story was told in a very different tone by international media because what Turkey did was good but not incredible.
Actually, what happened was that China “successfully” launched a Turkish earth observation satellite into orbit aboard a Chinese rocket that was tested in France. The GK-2 satellite was launched from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China’s Gobi Desert and was delivered into its predetermined orbit by a Long March 2D carrier rocket, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The launch marked the 174th flight of the Long March series of carrier rockets.
The satellite, a joint development by Turkey’s Space Technologies Research Institute and Turkish Aerospace Industries, Inc, will mainly be used for environmental protection, mineral resource exploration, urban planning and disaster monitoring and management.
This is not even a newsflash, as it is ordinary for the rest of the world. China successfully sent 28 satellites or spacecraft into space in 19 launches this year alone.
They say that it was 100 percent Turkish-made. Italy did that in 1964 with the San Marco 1.
What I am saying is not to discredit the success of the government. It is true that they are outperforming previous governments several-fold in space industries. What I am saying is that this is not enough. I would agree that Turkey did the unthinkable if we started outer-space mining at the same time as the rest of the world. But anything less seems to be setting the bar too low.