Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inaugurated the Altay tank mass production plant.

“We receive the first Altay. Every month we will produce 8 tanks and 10 Altu armored fighting vehicles,” he said.

Erdoğan: “Our mass production line, with an internal space of 63,000 square meters, will produce every month eight Altay tanks and ten Altuğ armored fighting vehicles, described as the fortress of the battlefield.

» We see the Altay tanks here today. Is it enough? In our opinion, it is not enough. We have to catch up with much more advanced technology. This was German technology. Now we have taken it much further.

» We continue their efforts with great determination. We are proud to deliver today to our heroic army the first of the Altay tanks, which have passed all the stages with 1.5 million hours of engineering, a testing process covering 35 thousand kilometers and 3,700 live shots. Equipped with new systems to adapt to the current combat environment at the highest level, the Altay main battle tank was developed to suit the most demanding environmental conditions.”

Erdogan’s reaction to embargoes and restrictions on SAFE

“The obstacles that are placed on us may delay us, but they do not prevent us from reaching our goal,” said the Turkish president about the embargo and the restrictions on his country’s accession to the European SAFE program.

“The obstacles we encounter and create on the way to our goals will only slow us down, maybe delay us a little, but they will never prevent us from reaching our goal. We will either find a way or create one, and eventually, we will reach our destination,” Erdogan said.

Turkish analysts: Greece and Israel to have F-35 – This upsets the balance with Turkey

ILIAS BOZKURT-PRESIDENT OF THE CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND ECONOMIC RESEARCH: With our exclusion from the F-35, a great void was created in our Air Force. Let me give you the picture. In our Air Force we have 235 F-16s. 135 of which are Block-30 and Block-40. 70 of these F-16s we use in training and the rest in transformation. That is, as a remainder we have almost 100 F-16 Block 50 fighters which we use as fighters. In addition, we have 47 F-4 Phantoms.

But let’s look at Israel. They have 175 F-16, 66 F-15 Eagle. Numerically they have the same number of fighters. But in the last two years they received 42 F-35s. When they got the F-35s the balance was broken. Because now they have 5th generation fighters. Let’s see this side, in Greece. Numerically, the Greek Air Force is weaker, but now they too are starting to receive F-35s, they also have the Eurofighter (Rafale), which means that from a geostrategic point of view, Turkey must also receive 5th generation fighters.

Turkish analyst: “We go and buy Eurofighters that we didn’t want 20 years ago and we buy them 4 and 5 times more expensive”

“Israel and Greece surpass us and have F-35 and 4th generation fighters”

Yilmaz Özdil, director of Sozcu newspaper: We would have and receive F-35s from 2020. In the first phase we would have 100 F-35s. We didn’t deal with Eurofighters and we didn’t deal with the purchase of F-16s. Then as a country we said ‘since we are not buying F-16 why should we buy Eurofighter. 20 years ago we were offered 80 Eurofighters for $6 billion and we didn’t take them. Now our 20 fighter jets are ‘pushing’ them for 10.5 billion dollars. And they tell us this as good news!

» We are buying fighters to face Greece and Israel. In this geography we have problems with these two countries. We will not go to war with Russia. To face Greece in the Aegean and Israel in Syria. We are looking for aircraft to deal with them. So we have to compare our air power with these two countries. But these countries have F-35. Israel has F-35, they hit Iran. From next year they will give F-35 to Greece as well!”.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer visited the facilities of the Turkish fighter KAAN – Suspicions that Britain will support the production of the KAAN with engines and know-how