Germany's cutting arms sales to Turkey boosts our defense firms, Turkish FM says

Freezing Germany's weapons exports to Turkey would only strengthen the local Turkish arms industry, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sept. 12. 

Çavuşoğlu was responding to remarks by his German counterpart, Sigmar Gabriel, who said Sept. 11 that Berlin was putting most arms exports to Turkey "on hold" due to recent bilateral tensions. 

"These kinds of approaches actually cause the strengthening of our own defense industry," Çavuşoğlu told a joint press conference in Ankara with his visiting Pakistani counterpart, Khawaja Muhammad Asif. 

"In this sense we increase national and local production in all areas. We produce our own fighter jets and helicopters. Turkey is never desperate," he added. 

Sales by top Turkish arms companies rose by more than 10 percent in 2015, according to an analysis released last December which also put Turkey's ASELSAN and Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI) among the world's top 100 arms firms. 

Turkish defense and aviation industry exports to Germany alone rose 17 percent year-on-year in the first eight months of 2017, the Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM) announced last week. 

Turkey plans to use only locally designed defense industry technology by 2020, Ismail Demir, undersecretary for the Defense Industry, had told state-run Anadolu Agency in June. 

Çavusoğlu called Gabriel his "friend," but said his approach ill-suited the foreign minister of a country on the eve of general elections. 

"We understand they started with 30 percent in the polls and now his party's support fell to 22 percent. But I'm not responsible for this. He's responsible for it, he was the head of the party until recently," he said. 

Gabriel's Social Democratic Party (SPD)...