Date: Issue 119 - December 2022
The summit was officially opened by Nurettin ÖZDEBİR, President of the Ankara Chamber of Industry (ASO), Osman OKYAY, Chairman of the Board of the Defense and Aerospace Industry Manufacturers Association (SaSaD), and Sami ATALAN, Chairman of the Defense Logistics Support Summit Organizing Committee.
In his speech at the opening of the summit, Nurettin ÖZDEBİR, President of the Ankara Chamber of Industry (ASO), stated that according to the analyses, military expenditures in developing countries, including Türkiye, have had a positive impact on investments in other fields. He also emphasized that military expenditures have been found to provide positive externalities to alternative fields. ÖZDEBİR expressed that the volume of defense projects in Türkiye exceeded 60 billion dollars as of 2022, underlining that defense industry revenue, which was 1.3 billion dollars in 2002, surpassed 10 billion dollars in 2021: "The industry, which invests 1.6 billion dollars annually in R&D, has surpassed its 248-million-dollar export capacity to reach an export volume of over 3.2 billion dollars. The sector's local content rate has increased from 20 percent to 70 percent. Nearly 800 projects are still being effectively conducted by our defense sector. As of 2022, the total volume of ongoing defense programs has surpassed 60 billion dollars."