President of Defense Industry Dr. İsmail DEMİR made statements about the Joint Strike F-35 Lightning II project at the panel organized by STM ThinkTech.
In the statement made by President DEMİR, “We do not have clear data about what is going on in the United States. However, we have seen the latest developments and more warm relations.
What I constantly emphasize in the F-35 process is that we are a partner in this process, and unilateral actions related to partnership have no legal basis and are not logical. There is no basis for associating this step with the S-400 when we consider the entire partnership structure. Turkey is not a leg to take decisions related to the aircraft but nothing to do and the other a non-issue. Although we rested it on our interlocutors many times and received no logical answers when we voiced it, the process was continued. Even in his own words, the project was said to have an additional cost of at least 500-600 million dollars. Again, according to our calculations, we see that there will be an additional cost of at least $ 8 to $ 10 million per plane.
It has been tried to give very clear messages to Turkey. In this process, we have always shown a loyal partner attitude. NSzamWe have shown that we will remain true to ourselves. Clearly, the activities of the program partners in Turkey will be suspended and although there are statements given in this direction; Without any counter-explanation, we have taken the attitude of minding our business and fulfilling our obligations as if the process was continuing normally. We see the benefit of this today.
March 2020 was the deadline. March 2020 came and passed. Our companies continue their production, orders continue to come. So, 'I threw I cut the rope at once' and 'now I'm off to Turkey "is not so easy. They even made this decision on the contribution of the Turkish industry to this partnership, even though the US officials had praised about the performance of Turkish companies in a wide variety of environments, regarding their production quality, costs and delivery times. Today we see that; replacing these competent companies with new manufacturers is not an easy process, and this pandemic process has taken this even further.
Again, we are at the point where we are and continue our production partnership. We did not go to a restraint that 'you (the USA) treated us like this, and we are stopping production', we will not go. Because if there is a partnership agreement and a path has been taken, we believe that the partners who set out on this path should continue this faithfully. ” made statements.
Source: Defense Industry
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