Turkey’s new military shipments to Ukraine is the delivery of dozens of Bayraktar TB2 drones, which were essential to Ukraine’s initial resistance to the Russian invasion, blowing up Russian military convoys and sinking Russian warships. The drones proved so effective in evading Russian air defenses that Ukrainians wrote songs and printed T-shirts celebrating them as a symbol of the country’s resistance.
“Ukraine War Gives Turkey’s Erdogan Opportunity to Extend His Influence,” by Jared Malsin, Wall Street Journal, November 5, 2022:
ISTANBUL—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is deepening his country’s military support for Ukraine while keeping an open line of communication to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin—a relationship that helped keep Ukrainian grain exports flowing this week—as he tries to expand Turkey’s role as a regional power broker.
In recent months, Turkey’s most prominent weapons maker, Baykar, has broken ground on a new factory in Kyiv that will double its capacity to produce armed drones. Last month, Turkey delivered a new corvette to the Ukrainian navy in a ceremony attended by Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov and first lady Olena Zelensky. The Milgem-class ship is now the largest in the Ukrainian fleet, which is expanding to challenge Russia’s dominance in the Black Sea and showing Turkey’s growing influence….
In doing so, Mr. Erdogan is burnishing Turkey’s credentials as an important regional player, a task made easier by one key element: his willingness to allow inflows of Russian money into Turkey after Western sanctions cut off Moscow from much of the global economy.
The Turkish president is now one of the few world leaders who regularly speak with Mr. Putin, pledging to increase trade with Russia despite the sanctions imposed after the start of the war and providing an important release valve….The war in Ukraine has thrown up an opportunity for Turkey to advance its growing defense industry while furthering its foreign-policy goals after pursuing a series of proxy wars with Russia in Syria, Libya and the South Caucasus region. Mr. Erdogan has made no secret of his global aspirations, selling Turkish-made drones to 24 countries worldwide, building diplomatic influence in central Asia through a council of Turkic states and deepening relations with a range of Middle Eastern powers this year in a diplomatic reset.
The centerpiece of Turkey’s new military shipments to Ukraine is the delivery of dozens of Bayraktar TB2 drones, which were essential to Ukraine’s initial resistance to the Russian invasion, blowing up Russian military convoys and sinking Russian warships. The drones proved so effective in evading Russian air defenses that Ukrainians wrote songs and printed T-shirts celebrating them as a symbol of the country’s resistance….
