Bayraktar is also the son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and there on the tarmac of a military base, his company Baykar displayed its new generation of unmanned combat aircraft — which will fly faster and farther, while carrying more weapons than its existing ones.
In a rare interview at the air-force base on the outskirts of Ankara, Bayraktar, an alumni of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, laid out ambitions to expand the company’s capabilities and international sales even further in an effort to boost Turkey’s heft overseas. Baykar will soon start mass-producing at least one of two advanced drones that will take off from Turkey’s newly-built mini aircraft carrier, the TCG Anadolu.
Turkey’s use of drones highlights the changing face of war in one of the world’s most volatile regions. Unmanned aerial vehicles turned the tide in Ankara’s decades-old counterinsurgency against the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party in the country’s southeast, northern Iraq, and Syria. Relatively cheap to make and deploy, the aircraft have in recent years helped swing conflicts in places as far afield as Azerbaijan and Libya in favor of Turkish allies.
The company made 82% of its profits from exports over the past two decades, Bayraktar said, adding the production capacity was increased 50% over the past year. Baykar was founded in 1986 by Selcuk’s father, Ozdemir, as a machinery company. But Selcuk had picked up an interest in aviation as a young boy and when he joined the business in 2007 he started the pivot into military equipment, developing unmanned combat aircraft and ground control systems. He married the president’s daughter, Sumeyye, in 2016.