Addressing the General Assembly about the development and objectives of the sectors, Mr. Murad Bayar; the Undersecretary for Defense Industries stated that ever growing role of Turkey in the world and its region has increased the need for the defense industry. Pointing at the fact that the current period for the defense sector is a process where what kind of a capability has been added to the security powers of the sectors is being questioned; Mr. BAYAR told that ?The objective of the defense sector is the production of highest level solutions to the needs of the security forces.?
Mr. BAYAR said that 50 percent of the defense requirements of Turkey are met through domestic facilities, yet the fact that half of the glass is still empty must be taken into consideration.
Reminding that Turkey?s target is to be among the top 10 economies in the world in 2023, Mr. BAYAR emphasized that the economic outputs to achieve this target must be provided by the defense sector. Referring to the national defense sector as one of those rare sectors having its unique products and brands, BAYAR stated that the year 2011 was good in terms of creating unique and national products. He told that the production in defense and aerospace in 2011 amounted 4.4 billion dollars, and that the sector grew 30 percent compared to 2010.
BAYAR said that the defense industry resumes its growth momentum, and that they anticipate that the current economic volume of the sector will have doubled by 2016, and added that as the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, they plan to increase the total turnover up to 8 billion dollars in the 2012-2016 strategic plan. Giving some information about the export figures they target at in their New Strategic plan, BAYAR continued his speech as follows: ?One of the issues we attach importance is the export; we had stipulated to increase the export to 1 billion dollars in the former plan. We were planning to raise it up to 1 billion dollars as of 2011. It was around 200-300 million dollars where we started. Our then-target was an increase of four folds. So let us see the figure for 2011; the total export revenues from defense and aerospace is 1.1 billion dollars. That is a nice figure; now 25 percent of 4.4 billion dollars comprises the export. Today, we say that let us increase this figure to 2 billion dollars within five years; that is in 2016. It is natural that the figures in sectors such as Construction, Textile, Automotive, etc. are higher, but I believe that the added value in our sector is quite higher. There is a technological content behind these figures, and therefore we believe that these figures in fact contributes directly or indirectly to the national economy as well. Likewise, the R&D expenditures of the sectors was another figure we were following on in the past years. The R&D expenditures of all sector enterprises last year was 672 million dollars; this is a good amount; it was 666 million dollars in the previous year; last year was higher than the previous one. We are the sector spending most on R&D considering these figures.?

Mr. BAYAR spoke about the National Fighter Aircraft project as follows: ?Turkey, today, has a project for developing a national combat jet, a fighter aircraft. This project has been built together with the Air Forces Command. We are taking the first step for this project. The conceptual design phase has commenced where TAI being the prime contractor. The developments are quite fast, and we have done a really good start. We will get provide a feedback to the Defense Industry Executive Committee after two years.? If the Committee also approves, the project will proceed to development phase.

Informing about the on-going project as well, BAYAR told that the National Warship, MILGEM, is now in service, and that today the Naval Forces Command procures its needs from the domestic industry along with a strong sub-industry for building Military Ships as well as other surface platforms. BAYAR also added that for the Land platforms, K?RP? is in the inventory of the army and is successfully being used. Summarizing the current situation in the Unique National projects, Mr. BAYAR continued his words as follows: ?The designs of National Tank; ALTAY is almost complete. The first prototype will be made by the end of this year. For aviation, ?ANKA? unmanned aerial vehicle and ?ATAK? attack helicopter are performing flight tests, and God willing we will have put into operation this year as well. Our guided missile, ?C?R?T?, will be in mass production this year, and its tests have been completed. We will publicize the trainer aircraft; HÜRKU?, sooner to the country. Its production is being completed. Production of GÖKTÜRK-II satellite has been completed; it will be launched this year, and we have placed the first purchase orders for the F-35 aircrafts of this international project. Of course, this is not a procurement project; numerous Turkish companies are involved as well, and it is a major production project for Turkey. From 2011, we are in a stage where many projects be they Land Platforms or Naval or Air in software and electronic fields have been delivered and export doors have been opened.?

Following the address of Mr. Murad BAYAR, the undersecretary for SSM, Mr. Cengiz ERGENEMAN, the acting chairman of SASAD took the floor at the general meeting to read out the working report for the January-March period. Mr. ERGENEMAN gave information about the amendment to the Bylaws made at the General Assembly dated 17 January 2012. About the amendments, ERGENEMAN said ?The first of the steps we considered as significant for the future of SASAD was to increase the number of Board of Directors to 13 members from 7. By this amendment, we wanted to ensure that small and medium size enterprises in our sector would have a chance for more effective representation in the SASAD management on the one hand and representation of our members engaging in different fields in the board of directors on the other. It is for sure that our new bylaws contain other very important changes as well. One of these changes is that we have included the Aviation and Space in our working areas in addition to the defense, and another is gaining the economic enterprise status to our association. This point will provide opportunities for the SMEs, small companies to get benefit from especially government incentives. Thus, SASAD will be able to draw up invoices and transfer government support to small companies. One other issue, which we believe is important for the future of SASAD, is the acceptance of natural persons to membership of our association not exceeding the limit of 5 persons from each member enterprise depending on their desires. We aim at increasing the financial resources of SASAD by this method. One other important issue is that we will hold the General Assembly in April of each year. In the past, we were holding the assemblies in January. The figures in January were the same with the previous year and we were discussing the figures from the previous year. Now, we will closely see what happened in past years by holding the Assembly in April.? Giving information about the works of SASAD in the new term, Mr. ERGENEMAN stated that the current number of members of SASAD is now 116 total, 66 of whom are natural persons and 50 legal persons thanks to the amendment to the bylaws of SASAD, which was established in 1990 by 12 enterprises, and further there are 46 candidate members in addition to these full members. ERGENEMAN told that they estimate the total production of SASAD in defense and aerospace will be around 9-10 billion dollars in 2016. Saying that SASAD has to do a lot in this stage, ERGENEMAN highlighted that collaboration between platform manufacturers and those companies supplying products to the platform is quite important. He told that their goal is to realize 2-billion dollar export in 2016 in defense, aviation and space fields, and export of 5 billion dollars in 2023, which is the 100th anniversary of the Republic.

Following the reading of activity report, the report of audit board was handed out to the members and it has been accepted by majority of the votes. After the acceptance of the report of Board of Audit; release of Board of Directors, delegation of Board of Directors with spending powers and amendments to the bylaws were put on vote by the association members and all the articles were accepted by majority of the votes. Following the voting of items on the agenda, the New Board of Directors were selected by the votes of the members.
There was also a first in the elections at the General Assembly. The SMEs serving as subcontractor to the defense industry got the chance to be represented for the first time in the SASAD Management with the election of Mr. Mithat ERTU?; Chairman of Association of OST?M Defense and Aerospace Clustering (OSSA) to the SASAD Board of Directors. Cengiz ERGENEMAN of ASELSAN was elected as the Chair of the Board of Directors, Kudret ÖNEN of RMK Marine to the Deputy Chair; and also the following people were elected to the Board of Directors of SASAD: ALP Aviation Co. ? Tuncer ALPATA,? ?stanbul Denizcilik Co.- Tayfur ARASLI, MKEK ? ?zzet ARTUNÇ, STM Co. ? Recep BARUT, B?TES Defense Co. - U?ur CO?KUN, TAI-Muharrem DÖRTKA?LI, TEI- Ak?n DUMAN, Mithat OSSA ? Mithat ERTU?, OTOKAR- Ahmet Serdar GÖRGÜÇ, FNSS ? Nail KURT and ROKETSAN ? Selçuk YA?AR.