A columnist close to the government, while evaluating the positive messages from U.S. President Trump to Turkey at the NATO Summit in Ankara, said the following sentence:
– “Trump should always come to us with such gifts…”
Reading this sentence, I was reminded of Turkey’s Cold War years.
Professor Feroz Ahmad, in his work titled “An Annotated Chronology of Multi-Party Politics in Turkey (1945-1971),” recounted day by day the steps Turkey took in its post-war relationship with the West:
The Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and then Turkey’s accession to NATO…
In those years, almost every positive news coming from Washington was not only a diplomatic development but also seen as a guarantee of security.
About eighty years have passed since then.
Today, the titles of the topics we discuss have changed: CAATSA, F-35…
But the psychology remains unchanged: every military news coming from Washington is still received as “the best news,” even sometimes as a “gift!”
However, one inevitably wonders:
Why does Turkey, which has been saying for half a century “we are building a domestic and national defense industry,” still place such importance on news of a warplane coming from America?
The answer to this question is not in the Pentagon but hidden in the 1974 Cyprus Peace Operation…
THE NEED FOR ASELSAN
The Cyprus Peace Operation is not only a victory in Turkey’s military history. It is also a turning point that shows the cost of dependency:
A significant portion of the communication systems used during the military operation were sourced from the U.S.
There were incompatibilities among the radios used by military units; due to electronic jamming environments and technical inadequacies, communication was sometimes interrupted…
When communication was cut, coordination weakened, the transmission of orders and sharing of situational information faltered…
As a result of the technical limitations caused by external dependency, one of the most painful military tragedies in the history of the Republic occurred with the sinking of our own TCG Kocatepe. Fifty-four Turkish sailors lost their lives.
What remained was not only great pain but also a historical lesson about the cost of dependency in the defense industry that must not be forgotten.
The subsequent American arms embargo revealed an even greater truth to Turkey:
In war, merely possessing weapons is not enough; you must also produce the communication systems, electronics, maintenance, ammunition, and critical technology of those weapons yourself.
Thus… the fundamental philosophy of the national defense industry was built upon this historical lesson after the Cyprus Operation:
You can buy the weapon, but if the will to use it is not yours, that weapon does not truly belong to you!
ASELSAN was born from this idea…
ASELSAN was not established, as many think, primarily to produce tanks, missiles, or aircraft. It was founded first to enable communication. In war, the first weapon often lost is not a rifle but communication…
The lesson that 1974, in which we lost 498 martyrs, taught Turkey was this: to ensure that foreign states never again interfere with Turkey’s battlefield communications…
THE TRUE WEAPON OF WAR
After Cyprus, Turkey turned to the national defense industry to reduce communication dependency. However:
As technology changed, the form of dependency changed. This time the problem was not radios but software and digital systems…
For example:
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) purchased from Israel showed Turkey the new reality of modern warfare. The UAV was yours, but dependency continued in many areas from maintenance to mission systems, critical technologies to integration. And Israel gradually caused difficulties…
This experience revealed that the electronic infrastructure, software, and development processes of that weapon must also be controlled.
Today, reducing the F-35 debate merely to the question of “should we buy the plane or not” is therefore incomplete. Because: in modern warfare, the real power is not controlling the aircraft’s body but controlling its mission computer, electronic warfare systems, data network, engine, and source code…
Domestic production and strategic independence are not the same: if someone else develops the software, someone else manages the critical technology, and you cannot change the system as you wish, the platform/system bearing your flag is not truly yours! You only deceive yourself or the crowd that votes for you…
The question that directed Turkey to the national defense industry in 1974 has actually never changed: that day the problem was radios, today it is software…
The technology changed, but what did not change is the question of who really decides your fate at the most critical moment of war…
True independence is not waiting for “gifts” from great powers but having technology that requires no gifts at all…
As we focus on short-term political gains, we fail to sufficiently discuss long-term strategic independence.
Soner Yalçın
https://www.odatv.com/yazarlar/soner-yalcin/trumpin-hediyesi-unutulan-ders-120153817