Transfer of military technology to developing countries: the Turkish case

Abstract

There is a switch from direct arms sales to military technology transfer to produce arms in the name of selfsufficiency. The value of domestic arms production at the beginning of the 1980s was about 500 times higher than that at the beginning of the 1950s. By the early 1980s, more than 50 developing countries were producing weapons . The evidence indicates that Turkey has relatively enough arms production potential. However, there is a technological gap which needs to be closed. Turkey should first follow a "path strategy" to create minimum required technological base by using some form of military technology transfer. Then, in the efforts toward indigenous arms production "engineering strategy" may be applied.