Military Radar and Border Security Summit
2 October 2019
ANKARA
Honourable Ministers ( Minister of National Defence Hulusi Akar, Minister of the Interior Süleyman Soylu),
Honourable President of Defence Industries (İsmail Demir),
Honourable Director General of Security,
Honourable Governor, Honourable Mayor,
Esteemed Presidents and Representatives of the Business World and of NGOs,
Esteemed Members of the Press,
I express the pleasure I feel at coming together with you at this summit, at which border security and radar systems, containing a highly strategic scope regarding the future of the Defence Industry, will be addressed; and I greet you all with respect and affection. Welcome, you have honoured us.
Distinguished Guests,
Today, threat perceptions unfortunately take on an asymmetric identity, far beyond attacks carried out against the security of a particular piece of territory.
Asymmetric threats make necessary not only the diversification of military and intelligence measures, but at the same time the redefinition of the concept of border security.
It is known to all of us: We are the faithful and equally resilient children of a difficult geography.
I would like to recall here a saying of Ibn Khaldun that has passed beyond the ages: Geography is destiny.
It is, in a sense, the political destiny of geopolitical geography upon a society.
For centuries, on these lands and in the shadow of our ancient civilization, we learned both to struggle against multi-polar threats and to develop combat techniques unique to us.
We became the inventors of a great many defence, assault and logistics techniques that have entered world military literature as the Turkish tradition.
However, times are changing.
As it was said in the epic of Köroğlu — our guests here who are close to our own age will remember: “The weapon was invented and chivalry was ruined.”
As the age changes, the structure both of war and of prophylactic defence systems naturally changes as well.
At precisely this point, the defence industry becomes not merely a military identity, but the field of manoeuvre of every sector in the economy, of diplomacy and of politics.
In terms of its outputs, the defence industry feeds many sectors, both in technology and in intermediate goods or production knowledge. For this reason the defence industry is not merely an upper branch of a sector, but a body of production and design knowledge.
Because its sphere of influence spreads over a rather broad surface.
The power of the defence industry is one of the most important trump cards of the diplomatic field.
Look, today's diplomacy does not merely determine the infrastructure and the field of action of politics.
Diplomacy too is divided into branches within itself, and all of these branches serve geostrategic decision-making processes:
Economic diplomacy
Commercial diplomacy
Security diplomacy
Cultural diplomacy
Military diplomacy, and so on.
Attaining national production and technology capacity in the defence industry both makes us strong in military diplomacy and gives us the capacity to react more quickly in the face of increasing threat perceptions.
As for military radar and border security, they are of quite vital importance in meeting threat detections and in operating rapid intelligence processes.
Esteemed guests,
With the perspective that “Knowledge is power”, the world has found itself in an entirely new era.
This new period, which we entered from the beginning of the 2000s, pushes us towards changing our conventional paradigms.
Because there is a known truth: Every power, if it is not correctly defined and directed, is in fact a threat.
Knowledge, in today's world, is a subject that must be handled with great sensitivity, as much for the threat it brings as for the power it provides. The defence industry is the place that balances the field of knowledge and the field of threat.
Because the defence of a country is the field not only of armed struggle, that is, of hot war, but at the same time of constantly taking precautions, of eliminating danger before it occurs, that is, of military prophylaxis.
For this reason, particularly in ensuring the security of our borders, the national production of high-technology national monitoring and detection systems, air defence gun and missile systems, aerial reconnaissance and surveillance, naval platforms and surveillance systems becomes possible through advanced radar technologies.
Esteemed guests,
The essence of international relations arises from the concept of “Power and Balance”.
Since conflicts constantly create threats, the state must be in a position to prevent this and, if it cannot prevent it and it emerges, to break it instantly. Because what is essential here is the survival of a nation. What is essential is human life. I would like to state here once again the pleasure I feel at being in the place where knowledge and experience are produced by people who give up their own destiny for the sake of human life.
If the matter is survival, then every state must increase its power in order to sustain its existence and to be able to protect its interests.
And this will make us the party that sits at the table with far more real trump cards in every field of diplomacy.
Of course, what is meant here is not to touch society solely from a military point of view.
However, the geography we possess and the concept of terrorism against which we have been struggling for close to 50 years have made us a society that is far more prudent and highly vigilant against danger.
Look, esteemed guests,
There is a saying we frequently recall: from many an event of which it is said “whichever state it befell would be laid waste”, our country has succeeded in emerging safe and sound thanks to the reflex capacity given by its history and to the support of its nation.
It is not easy to be engaged in a steady struggle for close to 50 years against terrorism, a multi-front threat.
With this awareness, in recent years Türkiye has been making a considerable push in order to produce its own defence industry and technology, and exists with the identity of a playmaker in this multi-variable game created by the concept of “power”.
We see that Türkiye's exports in the defence and aviation industry recorded an increase of % 17.1 in 2018 compared with the previous year, rising to USD 2 billion 35 million.
That the United States took first place in defence industry exports with USD 726 million, followed by Germany with USD 226 million, shows that our country is at a level capable of exporting defence industry products to developed countries as well.
As MÜSİAD, we are carrying out intensive work in order to be able to make a greater contribution to revealing this power and bringing out our country's potential.
The understanding of production that will carry Türkiye into the future must be focused on national and domestic production.
Distinguished Guests,
We have members who are already accomplishing successful work in the field of the defence industry in many parts of our country, above all along the Ankara, Kayseri and Kırıkkale line.
We have full confidence that, as a result of macro planning fed by needs analyses, many more of our companies will be channelled into this field and far more productive work will be carried out.
In this sense, by defining the concept of a culture of partnership, we are establishing committees based on the defence industry.
Our Large-Scale Capital Partnerships Committee proceeds directly through the concept of partnership in the defence industry. Our starting point in this field, in which scale is essential, is to develop SME structures and to create a separate national element for defence sub-industry investments.
Esteemed guests,
On this path we set out upon under the name of the “Renewal period”, we aim to do justice to a 30-year culture, a tradition of doing business and a love of country. Because we know that MÜSİAD is not merely an NGO or a businessmen's association. MÜSİAD is a part of, indeed is itself, the 30-year political and economic story of this country.
In this period, in which Türkiye is preparing to write a new story, our aim, as always, is to be the party that writes the legend on the geopolitical map of the new world, with a MÜSİAD in the service of its nation and at the side of its state. And this comes about only through the blending of knowledge and experience with a national consciousness. This is also the answer to the question: What is MÜSİAD?
MÜSİAD is the host in which knowledge, experience and memory are blended with a national consciousness. Our door is open to everyone who possesses this consciousness.
Digitalization and Commercialization of Knowledge Committee
Defence Industry Partnerships Committee,
Innovation in Competition Planning Committee
Localization and National Production Committee
Resource Development in Multi-Partner Capital Committee
Industrial Zones and Campuses Committee
Our Academia-Industry-Public Cooperation Committees, for example, are the interlocutors of this summit at which we will today discuss the future of the defence industry.
With MÜSİAD, which we have redesigned in the form of project-based and output-oriented working groups, we have moved to a new understanding that advances much more quickly and develops goal-oriented projects.
The Committees I listed above were only a few examples for which a field of work has been opened through the subjects this summit touches upon. We have set out on the road for the New Türkiye with 40 Committees that cover every sector in our country and are shaped as tactical road maps for each sector. I would like to state here once again that we are proud of this.
And our aim is clear in our motto:
Together in good days and in bad, from eternity to eternity.
In the New World there is now a new Türkiye. The New Türkiye has a new model of governance. This model also imposes responsibilities upon us. All of us — from professional associations to chambers, from boards to companies — must be active in a wholesale process of institutional change.
Knowledge is power. But in a world in which knowledge updates itself at every moment, real power lies in being the party that gives direction to it, not the one that follows it. This is MÜSİAD. It befits the ummah of the noble Prophet, who declared that “whoever's two days are equal is not one of us”, to work, to produce and to stand upright with trust in God in the face of every threat. This is what befits us.
Honourable Minister, Distinguished Guests,
As I complete my remarks here, I hope that these meetings, which we consider extremely important for a “national and domestic” defence industry, will continue in increasing measure.
I thank everyone who contributed to this valuable organization and greet you all with respect.
Abdurrahman Kaan
President of MÜSİAD