The 27th of Eurosatory, one of the largest defense industry fairs in Europe, was held in Paris, the capital of France, between 13-17 June 2022. As Defence Turk, we participated in the fair and followed the developments. Our team participated in many launches and seminars during the Eurosatory process, while at the same time held numerous meetings with many local and foreign companies.
Companies based in Europe have done successful work in hosting and informing their guests at the fair. In particular, both the press teams and the project directors of Nexter, BAE Systems and Rheinmetall were interested and helped in all matters. In addition to the density of people over the age of 35-40, which prevails throughout the fair, when young names like us asked for information, company officials responded with more interest, unlike the authorities in our country.
In addition to these positive situations, there were also companies that learned that we were visiting from Turkey and showed negative behavior only due to the this reason. The biggest example of this was made by the German company Diehl Defense. When we wanted to take a photo from the video on the screen, which was displayed in the booth open to everyone’s view and most people viewed and shot, when the company official learned that we came from Turkey, they took a rather inappropriate attitude by preventing the shooting. Since we participated from Turkey during the fair, we encountered similar approaches, but it should be stated that it does not reflect the generality.
“We cannot even imagine what Turkey will be capable of”
The increase in expectations led by Baykar Teknoloji for the Turkish defense industry has affected even the employees of world giants at the fair. A senior official at Rheinmetall said firsthand: “I went to Turkey for the first time in 2001 or 2003 to attend a defense industry fair. At that time, Turkey didn’t even have a name in the industry, but we can’t even guess what Turkey can do right now. It is truly admirable that a country can develop so rapidly in the sector in such a short time. Today we see what Bayraktar has achieved. Turkey has a very young and dynamic population and this is a huge advantage, we unfortunately do not have this advantage as Germany.” Our country needs to evaluate this sympathy well in order to organize its marketing activities by maintaining the current momentum and to establish a defense industry export network that is not limited to the countries in Turkey’s influence area with the current wind.
