Defense exports climb to $4.3 billion in 10 months

ANKARA

The Turkish defense and aviation industry’s export revenues amounted to $4.3 billion in the first 10 months of 2023, Türkiye's Defense Industry Agency (SSB) head Haluk Görgün has said, stressing that this year’s export target is $6 billion.

In October alone, the industry’s export revenues amounted to $514.8 million, Görgün added.

“We continue to grow our defense industry in the international arena and crown our national engineering with our exports,” he wrote on the social media platform X.

The defense industry’s exports, which accounted for 2.3 percent of Türkiye’s total export revenues, last month increased 10.8 percent from a year ago.

Defense and aviation export revenues grew 35.4 percent in the January-October period compared with the first 10 months of 2022. The industry’s 12-month rolling exports stood at $5.5 billion.

“This year’s [export] target is $6 billion. I wholeheartedly believe that we will achieve this goal together with all our companies,” Görgün wrote.

Türkiye has been working to reduce its dependency on defense imports and to become a major player in the global market. The numbers show that it is moving toward achieving this goal.

Last year, the industry’s export revenues amounted to a record $4.4

billion, rising from $3.22 billion in 2021.

Back in 2022, export revenues stood at only $248 million. Exports surpassed $1 billion for the first time in 2011 and breached the $2 billion mark in 2018.

Total turnover in the defense and aviation industry stood at $12.2 billion in 2022, increasing from only $1.1 billion two decades ago.

The number of projects local companies carried out rose from 62 in 2002 to more than 850 in 2023.