What the 2025 Export Record Measures and What It Does Not
ABSTRACT
Turkish defence and aerospace exports rose 48 percent in 2025 to 10.05 billion dollars, with new contracts of 17.8 billion. This analysis argues that the figures measure commercial performance in an exogenous demand cycle rather than technological autonomy, identifies the subsystem dependencies that remain unresolved, and specifies the test by which the current period should be judged.
1. The figures
Turkish defence and aerospace exports reached 10.054 billion dollars in 2025, comprising 9.87 billion in goods and 184 million in services, against 7.1 billion dollars in 2024 — an increase of approximately 48 percent. Weapons and ammunition accounted for 4.7 billion dollars of the total. December 2025 alone produced more than 2.5 billion dollars in exports, a monthly record.
New sales and export contracts signed during 2025 totalled 17.8 billion dollars, against 10 billion in 2024, an increase of roughly 78 percent. The sector’s share of total Turkish exports rose from 1.7 percent in 2022 to 3.7 percent in 2025, with total exports at 273.4 billion dollars. Approximately 56 percent of defence exports went to European Union member states, NATO allies and the United States, with four European countries among the top ten markets.
The trajectory over three years is steep: 4.4 billion dollars in 2022, 5.5 billion in 2023, 7.15 billion in 2024, 10.05 billion in 2025. Against a 2002 baseline of 248 million dollars, the sector has grown roughly fortyfold in nominal terms.
2. What the figures measure
Export revenue is a measure of commercial performance in international markets. It is a reliable indicator of three things: that Turkish systems meet buyer requirements at competitive prices, that the industrial base can execute delivery schedules, and that political constraints on Turkish arms transfers are not binding across a broad set of markets. The 56 percent share going to NATO and EU markets is particularly informative, because those buyers apply qualification standards that a supplier cannot meet through price alone.
It is not a measure of technological autonomy, and the distinction is not pedantic. A defence industrial base can post record exports while remaining dependent on foreign suppliers for the components that determine whether production can continue under political stress. That dependency is invisible in export statistics and decisive in a crisis.
3. The subsystem dependencies
Four categories of dependency persist. Propulsion is the most consequential: engines and power groups for aircraft, helicopters, armoured vehicles and naval platforms remain substantially imported, and engine technology is among the most tightly held categories in the international transfer system. Advanced semiconductors — high-performance processing, radiation-tolerant components, specialised radio-frequency devices — are not manufactured domestically at the required nodes. Sensor components, particularly focal plane arrays and certain seeker technologies, depend on a small number of foreign suppliers. Specialised materials, including some composites, high-temperature alloys and rare earth permanent magnets, sit at the end of supply chains that Türkiye does not control.
The rare earth case connects to the broader industrial argument. A single fifth-generation fighter contains roughly 417 kilograms of rare earth material, and permanent magnets are indispensable to precision-guided munitions, unmanned systems, sonar arrays and electronic warfare suites. China accounts for approximately 70 percent of global rare earth mine production and 85 to 90 percent of separation and refining capacity. Domestic deposits do not resolve this; separation capability does, and Türkiye’s pilot facility at Beylikova currently processes 1,200 tonnes of ore annually against an announced industrial target of 570,000 tonnes.
4. The demand cycle is exogenous
The second qualification concerns the source of demand. Turkish firms entered a European rearmament cycle that they did not create and do not control.
The Hague defence investment commitment obliges NATO members to spend at least 5 percent of gross domestic product on defence and security-related expenditure by 2035. It was reaffirmed at the Ankara Summit of 7–8 July 2026, where the Alliance’s Secretary General reported that average investment had already reached approximately 4 percent, and where the declaration set out more than 50 billion dollars in new equipment procurement and 70 billion euros for Ukraine in 2026. The NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum, held in Ankara on 7 July 2026, produced announcements ranging from counter-drone systems to integrated air and missile defence and precision strike, with deal values in the billions.
Demand cycles of this kind have a characteristic shape: rapid expansion driven by inventory replacement and threat reassessment, followed by a plateau once stocks are rebuilt and a contraction as budgets normalise. A supplier that expands capacity to meet the peak and does not secure a position in the subsequent steady state faces overcapacity. The relevant question for Turkish firms is not whether the current cycle will end but what they will hold when it does.
5. Partial market access
The third qualification is structural. Türkiye occupies an asymmetric position: included in NATO’s industrial and operational architecture, excluded from the European Union instruments financing much of the same rearmament.
The Ankara Summit consolidated the first half of that position. Türkiye hosted the summit and the industry forum, concluded a bilateral Security and Defence Partnership with the United Kingdom, and pushed allied language on removing defence trade barriers. Reporting around the summit indicated movement on advanced jet engine supply from the United States and possible re-engagement with the fifth-generation fighter programme, though both remain subject to legislative resistance connected to the earlier acquisition of Russian air defence systems.
The second half remains unchanged. European Union rearmament funding instruments are closed to Turkish firms by design, which means that a substantial share of European defence spending is channelled through mechanisms in which Turkish suppliers cannot participate directly. Access therefore runs through bilateral partnerships and through participation as a subcontractor to eligible prime contractors, both of which are available and neither of which confers the position that membership of the funding perimeter would.
6. The test
These qualifications suggest a specific test for the current period, and it is not an export target. The test is whether contracts signed during the rearmament cycle transfer process technology in the four dependency categories.
Concretely, that means examining whether agreements include co-production with technology transfer rather than licensed assembly; whether Turkish firms achieve qualified second-source status for subsystems in allied supply chains, which creates a durable position that survives the cycle; whether joint development programmes place Turkish engineers in design authority roles rather than production roles; and whether offset arrangements are directed at the dependency categories rather than at general industrial participation.
None of these appear in export statistics. All of them determine whether the industrial base can sustain production under conditions in which suppliers become unwilling — the condition that defence industrial autonomy exists to address. The gas-insulated switchgear episode at the Akkuyu nuclear project, where a European supplier withheld a committed component and an alternative had to be sourced through Chinese partners, is an instructive precedent from an adjacent sector.
7. Conclusion
The 2025 figures record a genuine industrial achievement: a fortyfold nominal increase over two decades, a doubling of the sector’s export share in three years, and majority sales into markets that apply demanding qualification standards. They also record a commercial position within an exogenous demand cycle, held by a base that remains dependent on foreign suppliers for propulsion, advanced semiconductors, sensors and specialised materials. Export revenue and industrial autonomy are different variables, and only the first is currently being measured. The period should be judged on what it transfers, not on what it earns.
SOURCES
Presidency of Defence Industries (SSB) and Turkish Exporters Assembly, 2025 defence and aerospace export data, announced 3 January 2026.
NATO, 2026 Ankara Summit overview and NATO Summit Defence Industry Forum (NSDIF26), 7 July 2026; Ankara Declaration, 36th NATO Summit, 7–8 July 2026.
Atlantic Council (2026) ‘Dispatch from Ankara: Turkey is establishing its own role in NATO 3.0’, July 2026.
Friends of Europe (2026) ‘The NATO Summit in Ankara: moving towards Alliance 3.0’.
TÜİK, Foreign Trade Statistics 2025.
Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources statements on the Beylikova rare earth project, OECD Critical Minerals Forum, Istanbul, 28 April 2026.
Akkuyu Nükleer AŞ statements on gas-insulated switchgear supply, December 2025.
Furkan Mahmut Tameroglu