Portugal In Talks With Turkish Drone Manufacturer Baykar For The Purchase of UAVs
Portugal has begun talks with the Turkish drone manufacturer Baykar about purchasing unmanned aerial vehicles. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu made the announcement during a press conference with Portuguese Foreign Minister Joao Gomes Cravinho. “We had the opportunity to discuss many issues with Portuguese Foreign Minister Joao Gomes Cravinho, from commercial relations to the defense industry,” Çavuşoğlu said at the joint press conference. “Our companies have also begun to make significant investments in Portugal. We want to expand our cooperation in this area with Portugal, which is an important maritime country. We paid a visit to our Baykar company last week, and I learned that negotiations in the field of defense industry cooperation have begun between Baykar and Portugal. In other words, we want to strengthen the ties between our two countries and the private sector,” he said.
Çavuşoğlu continued, “Our trade volume with Portugal has approached three billion dollars. There is a lot of potential. Our businesses have also begun to make significant investments in Portugal. A total of 1.6 billion euros has been invested. Portuguese companies have invested $764 million in our country, and we agreed today to encourage our companies.”
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu did not comment on whether Portugal was in talks with Baykar about purchasing Bayraktar TB2 or Bayraktar Akıncı. If Portugal purchases Baykar’s Bayraktar TB2 systems, it will become the second European country to do so, following Poland. If Portugal is in negotiations with Baykar to purchase the Akıncı drone system, Portugal will be the first nation in Europe to operate these systems.
28 countries, including NATO ally Poland, now use the Bayraktar TB2. While 19 of these countries publicly announced their purchase of TB2s, the names of the remaining 9 are unknown. Potential buyers include Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, El Salvador, Serbia, Slovakia, Malaysia, and Indonesia. There is also the possibility that some of these countries received an unspecified number of exports. So far, Bayraktar AKINCI has been exported to five countries. Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan are known users of the Bayraktar Akıncı.