Within the scope of developing the Aerospace and Aviation Systems, with the “Industrialization in Aerospace and Space Conference” held at Turkey’s Technology Center TAI facilities on 26 April 2016, the relevant industrialists and representatives of governmental institutions and private associations gathered in order to make an assessment of the current developments and share the ideas for further growth with the sub-industry. Representatives from the Ministry of Economy, Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, Industry Clusters and Sub-Industry as well as Boeing and Airbus officials attended the conference-taking place at TAI facilities. 

In his opening remark, TAI President and CEO Muharrem Dörtkaşlı stated that the volume of work transferred to the sub-industry was increasing each day in parallel with TAI’s development throughout the years and the products it delivered and added, “As TAI, presently we are sharing over 2 million hours of workload with our sub-industry. During the negotiations conducted in 2004 for the sale of TAI shares, in order to identify the value of the company as an asset, we envisioned that we would be executing the distribution of a workload consisting of 1.7 million hours and the value of the company was based on this estimation. I believe that we expanded our company by enjoying the growth power and potential of civil aviation since that day”. Noting that the growth of civil aviation was approximately 5% Dörtkaşlı said, “I assume that the fleet growth of Turkish Airlines would be at the level of 15%. Including the projects conducted with Airbus and Boeing, our growth remains around 24%. Therefore, I believe that we are doing our business well and in my opinion we are quite competitive. But is this enough? No it is not and we have to continue our progress in this path by increasing our achievements. Turkey has an export target of $ 500 billion set for the ambitious 2023 vision. I think that as the aerospace industry, we will be making important contributions toward this goal. For increasing our export volume to $ 500 billion within 7 – 8 years, which is currently at the level of $150 – 160 billion, we have to increase the exports per kilogram from $1.5 to $3. Only by this way, we would be able to achieve the $ 500 billion target.