FNSS, Havelsan and MilSOFT company officials, representatives from the Undersecretariat for Defence Industries (SSM) and Universities and many invitees in addition to the Undersecretary for Defence Industries Murad Bayar and METU President Prof. Ahmet Acar attended the ceremony for the signing of the second memorandum of understanding. In his speech at the Signing Ceremony, METU President Prof. Ahmet Acar mentioned that after the launching of the program in 2011 with the participation of Aselsan, Roketsan and TAI, approximately 50 projects acquired from three companies were twinned within the scope of SAYP. Stating that the size of these twinning projects amounted to a total of 2.5 million TL, Acar continued, “This program is an extension of the program we launched in 2002 in METU for training academicians and for us the cooperation between University and Industry matters more than the financial aspect of the program”. Acar stressed that their expectation from SAYP was too high and said, “Presently over 1000 students continuing their postgraduate studies are working at Defence Industry. Therefore, I believe that the thesis studies of these students would contribute greatly to the sector”. At the final part of his speech Acar mentioned that the second memorandum of understanding they signed with the aforementioned three companies should also be regarded as a call for the remaining defence industry companies and that they were expecting new participations to the program in the future. 

In his speech at the ceremony, Undersecretary for Defence Industries Murad Bayar underlined the need of Turkish Defence Industry for qualified brainpower in the projects and added that they would have to develop certain mechanisms for this and said “We are enabling the support and harmonization of the postgraduate studies with the ongoing projects of the companies with the help of this program and we wish to take the brainpower at universities at our side”. Murad Bayar stated that they had ambitious goals within the scope of these projects and that they needed the brainpower at universities as well as the participation of whole industry’s participation for achievement. Bayar stated that they started this model two years ago and continued “This model should be adopted by the other universities as well. METU is the leader in this arena and hopefully we would be able to actualize similar programs in other universities in the future”.  Following the speeches, Undersecretary for Defence Industries Murad Bayar, METU President Ahmet Acar and representatives from FNSS, Havelsan and MilSOFT signed the memorandum of understanding.