Oleksandr Turchynov: Cooperation between Ukraine’s and Turkey’s defense industries has serious prospects

Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov held a meeting with Director of the Secretariat for Defense Industries of the Republic of Turkey Іsmail Demir.

During the meeting, the interlocutors discussed the issues of cooperation between the leading enterprises of the military-industrial complex of Ukraine and Turkey and implementation of a number of joint projects in the sphere of military-technical cooperation.

According to Mr. Turchynov, after the last meeting with Іsmail Demir, the agreement on establishing a joint coordination group on military-technical cooperation was implemented, "and the group began to work efficiently". "We are working towards the implementation of specific projects and a wide range of tasks, particularly in terms of producing armored vehicles, rocket and missile engineering, aircraft engineering and others", - Secretary of the NSDC of Ukraine said, adding that the Ukrainian party considers the creation of joint enterprises with Turkey a promising area of cooperation; these enterprises "would produce ammunition supplies, unmanned aerial vehicles, missiles, tanks, communications equipment, etc." In this context, the parties discussed the question of attracting Turkish investments in the military-industrial complex of Ukraine.

In his turn, Mr. Demir emphasized that the meetings with Secretary of the NSDC of Ukraine "always result in the implementation of the discussed topics". "The coordination group created after our meeting is now successfully working and takes to the realization of specific projects", - he stated.

According to the head of the Turkish defense industry, Turkey is interested in developing cooperation with our country in the defense-industrial sphere: "We appreciate the cooperation with Ukraine and are interested in substantial extension of mutually beneficial collaboration".

"We see that our countries can ensure the implementation of many large-scale projects, which will make for a greater synergy and strengthen their defense capabilities", - Ismail Demir underlined.