Turkey’s defence industry is booming


Indonesia has announced it’ll purchase 12 Turkish-made ANKA drones for $300M, with the first shipment expected to arrive in November 2025.

Drones have become some of Turkey’s highest-profile exports. Just in the last month:

  1. 🇰🇼 Kuwait purchased $367M of TB2 drones from the firm Baykar
  2. 🇽🇰 Kosovo also bought an undisclosed number of TB2s, and
  3. 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia sealed Turkey’s largest ever defence export deal, buying ~$1B worth of Baykar’s newer Akinci drones.

Plus, there are another 30 countries that own and operate Turkish drones, which have appeared on battlefields around Libya, Azerbaijan, Syria, Ukraine and beyond.

Intrigue’s take: You can see why Turkey’s drones are popular – they’re durable, effective, and cheap. Hence their reputation as the ‘Toyota Corolla of drones’.

And Turkey itself benefits, too: it needs the export revenue, plus having nations dependent on it for defence kit gives Ankara leverage.

Also worth noting:

Latest Author Articles
The Israel-Hamas ceasefire wobbles

It’s been three weeks since Israel and Hamas signed a deal that put a tentative end to their ~16 months of devastating conflict.  The pact ramped up the flow of aid into the strip and enabled the return of an initial 16 Israeli hostages held by Hamas and more than 730 Palestinian prisoners in Israel. […]

14 February, 2025
Did the US just ditch Ukraine?

As world leaders, chief diplomats, and defence leaders alike board their private jets to Munich today, just know that their teams are re-writing every briefing note and messaging strategy in the wake of Washington’s mic drop only hours ago.  Here’s what happened.  Speaking first from Brussels at the UK-chaired Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting, the […]

13 February, 2025
Canada’s Trudeau resigns as PM, to stay on until new leader chosen

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has resigned as Liberal Party leader and will end his term as PM as soon as an internal party successor has been named, Trudeau told the press at Rideau Cottage in Ottawa on Monday morning.  Trudeau’s resignation ends his nine-year term in power, marked by an open-revolt ending with numerous […]

6 January, 2025
Biden blocks Nippon Steel deal

With less than two weeks in US President Joe Biden’s term, the outgoing president blocked Japan’s Nippon Steel’s proposed $14.9B purchase of US Steel, citing national security and supply chain concerns.

3 January, 2025