Anadolu Agency June 18, 2025
2025: A historic turning point for Türkiye’s aerospace industry
The year 2025 is proving to be a landmark for the Turkish aerospace sector, with a series of high-profile announcements and international agreements that underscore the country’s growing prominence in global defense and aviation markets.
May 14 - Madrid: Turkish Aerospace Industries (TAI), the Spanish Ministry of Defense, and Airbus signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the export (and joint manufacturing of selected subsystems) of the Hürjet, Türkiye’s advanced jet trainer and light attack aircraft.
June 16 - Le Bourget: announcement at the Paris Airshow of the joint venture, named LBA Systems, between Baykar and the Italian conglomerate Leonardo for the design, development, manufacturing and technical support of unmanned aerial systems.
And, just a few days before, on June 11, at the INDO Defence 2025 exhibition in Jakarta, Türkiye and the Indonesian Air Force finalized a groundbreaking export agreement -- one of the most significant in Turkish aerospace history: the sale of 48 KAAN fifth-generation fighter jets, currently under development by Turkish Aerospace Industries. The historic deal was first announced by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in a post on X, stating: "This agreement, which demonstrates the progress and current level of our national defense industry, will bring prosperity to both Türkiye and Indonesia” and added: “Indonesia's local capabilities will also be utilized in the production of KAAN.”
The signing ceremony was attended by high-ranking officials from both countries. These included Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, Türkiye’s Defense Industries President Haluk Gorgun, and TAI CEO Mehmet Demiroglu, among others. The agreement outlines strategic cooperation aimed at fostering knowledge exchange and strengthening local aerospace capabilities in both countries. With this first export success, Türkiye joins the exclusive group of nations capable not only of designing, developing, and producing fifth-generation fighter aircraft but also of securing export orders for them.
The KAAN program: A technological milestone
Formerly known as TF-X, the KAAN represents the pinnacle of Turkish aerospace engineering. It is a fifth-generation, multi-role combat aircraft featuring high maneuverability, low radar visibility, AI-powered avionics, and advanced network-centric warfare capabilities. The aircraft completed its maiden flight on Feb. 21, 2024, followed by a second flight on May 6, 2024. It is expected to enter operational service by 2028. Deliveries to Indonesia are scheduled to begin in the early 2030s and are projected to be completed over a 10-year period. According to Turkish media, the deal with Indonesia is valued at $15 billion. It is expected to accelerate production, foster integration of a new engine, the TF-35000 by TUSAS Engine Industries (TEI), and pave the way for economies of scale, potentially making KAAN more competitive on the international market.
Indonesia’s changing strategy and regional implications
Indonesia, currently operating a mixed fleet of US-made F-16s and aging Russian Sukhoi jets, had initially partnered with South Korea on the KF-21 Boramae project, but economic constraints led Jakarta to reduce its participation, with additional concerns around technology transfer.
Indonesia has also explored alternatives. In August 2023, it signed an MoU with Boeing for the F-15EX, although the agreement still awaits government approval and faces challenges such as the recently announced US tariffs. Indonesia is also reportedly considering acquiring additional Dassault Rafale jets, having already ordered 42 of them in 2022.
The KAAN deal further strengthens the growing defense ties between Türkiye and Indonesia. In February 2025, Baykar signed a joint venture agreement with Indonesian firm Republikorp to establish a drone manufacturing facility in the country.
Could other ASEAN nations follow Indonesia’s lead?
Given the deepening economic and defense ties between Türkiye and Indonesia, both Muslim-majority nations, the question arises: could other ASEAN countries also consider the KAAN for their defense needs? As a non-US platform, KAAN may avoid some of the geopolitical complications tied to US-made aircraft like the F-16 or F-35. It could also offer a more cost-effective alternative.
Initial ASEAN interest may remain focused on proven platforms such as the F-15EX or the Rafale. Wider adoption of KAAN will likely depend on a mix of political relations with Türkiye, offset agreements, and how well the aircraft integrates with existing military systems. Malaysia appears to be the most likely next customer in the area, having been formally offered a partnership on KAAN project by TAI. The Philippines and Vietnam may also express interest, but their decisions will hinge on cost, capabilities, and strategic considerations. Meanwhile, Singapore and Thailand are likely to remain cautious, balancing modernization needs with their existing interoperability with Western allies. For smaller nations like Myanmar, Cambodia, and Brunei, the cost of acquiring advanced fighters like the KAAN may remain prohibitive due to limited defense budgets.
Türkiye’s aerospace industry has taken a decisive step onto the world stage in 2025. The KAAN’s success in securing its first major export deal is a signal of Türkiye’s ambition to become a global player in advanced defense technologies. The next few years will reveal whether this ambition can translate into broader international adoption and a redefined balance in global fighter jet markets.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Anadolu's editorial policy.
India forcibly sterilised 8m men:
One village remembers, 50 years later
By Yashraj Sharma
Uttawar, India — When everybody ran, towards the jungles and nearby villages, or dived into a well to hide from government officials, Mohammad Deenu stayed put.
His village, Uttawar, in the Mewat region of northern India’s Haryana state, about 90km (56 miles) from the capital, New Delhi, was surrounded by the police on that cold night in November 1976. Their ask: men of fertile age must assemble in the village ground.
India was 17 months into its closest brush with dictatorship – a state of national emergency imposed by then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, during which civil liberties were suspended. Thousands of political opponents were jailed without a trial, an otherwise rambunctious press was censored, and, backed by financial incentives from the World Bank and the United States, India embarked on a massive forced sterilisation programme.
Deenu and his 14 friends were among its targets. They were pushed into the forces’ vehicles and taken to ill-managed sterilisation camps. To Deenu, it was a “sacrifice” that saved the village and its future generations.
“When everyone was running to save themselves, some elders [of the village] realised that if no one is found, it would create even bigger, long-lasting troubles,” Deenu recalled, sitting on a torn wooden cot. “So, some men from the village were collected and given away.”
“We saved this village by our sacrifice. See around, the village is full of God’s children running around today,” he said, now in his late 90s.
As the world’s largest democracy marks 50 years since the imposition of the emergency on June 25, Deenu is the only man who had been targeted in Uttawar as part of the forced sterilisation project who is still alive.
More than 8 million men were forced to undergo a vasectomy during that period, which lasted until March 1977, when the state of emergency was lifted. This included 6 million men in just 1976. Nearly 2,000 people died in botched surgeries.
Five decades on, those scars live on in Uttawar.
‘A graveyard, just silence’
In 1952, just five years after securing its freedom from the British, India became the world’s first country to adopt a national family planning programme. At the time, the idea was to encourage families to have no more than two children.
By the 1960s, at a time when birth rates were close to six children per woman, the government of Indira Gandhi began adopting more aggressive measures. India’s booming population was seen as a burden on its economy, which grew at an average of 4 percent from the 1950s until the 1990s.
The West seemed to share that view: The World Bank loaned India $66m for sterilisation initiatives, and the US made food aid to a starving India contingent on its success at population control.
But it was during the emergency, with all the democratic checks and balances removed, that the Indira Gandhi government went into overdrive, using a mix of coercion and punishment to pressure government officials into implementing forced sterilisation, and communities into accepting it.
Government officials were given quotas of how many people they had to sterilise. Those who failed their targets had their salaries withheld or faced the threat of dismissal from their jobs. Meanwhile, irrigation water was cut off from villages that refused to cooperate.
Security forces were also unleashed on those who resisted – including in the village of Uttawar, which had a predominantly Muslim population, like many of the communities targeted. The Muslim birthrate in India at the time was significantly higher than that of other communities, making members of the religion a particular focus of the mass sterilisation initiative.
In the lane next to Deenu’s house, Mohammad Noor, then a 13-year-old, was sleeping in his father’s arms in a cot outside their house when policemen, some of them riding horses, raided their home. His father ran towards a nearby jungle, and Noor rushed inside.
“They broke the doors and everything that came in their way; they shattered everything they could see,” Noor recalled. “To make our lives worse, they mixed sand in flour. There was not even a single home in the village that could cook food for the next four days.”
Noor was picked up in the raid, taken to a local police station and beaten before he was let go. He said that because he was under 15, he was deemed too young for a vasectomy.
That night of scare, as the village calls it now, also gave birth to a local folklore: the words of Abdul Rehman, then the village head. “Outside our village, no one would remember this name, but we do,” said Tajamul Mohammad, Noor’s childhood friend. Both are now 63 years old.
Before raiding Uttawar, several officials had come to the village, asking Rehman to give away some men. “But he remained steadfast and denied them, saying, ‘I cannot put any family in this place’,” said Tajamul, with Noor nodding passionately. Rehman also did not agree to give away men from neighbouring areas either, who were sheltering in Uttawar.
According to a local Uttawar legend, Rehman told the officials: “I will not give away a dog from my area, and you are demanding humans from me. Never!”
But Rehman’s resolve could not save the village, which was left in a state of mourning after the raids, said Noor, sucking tobacco from a hookah.
“People who ran away, or those who were taken away by the police, did not return for weeks,” he said. “Uttawar was like a graveyard, just silence.”
In the years that followed, the impact became more visible and dreadful. Neighbouring villages would not allow marriages with men of Uttawar, even those who were not sterilised, while some broke their existing engagements.
“Some of the people [men in Uttawar] were never able to recover from that mental shock, and spent years of their lives anxious or disturbed,” said Kasim, a local social worker who goes by his first name. “The tension and the social taboo killed them and cut their lives short.”
Echoes in today’s India
Today, India no longer has a coercive population control programme, and the country’s fertility rate is now just more than two children per woman.
But the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that marked the emergency has returned in a new avatar, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, believe some experts.
For 75-year-old Shiv Visvanathan, a renowned Indian social scientist, the emergency helped perpetuate authoritarianism.
In the face of a rising student movement and a resurgent political opposition, the Allahabad High Court on June 12, 1975, found Indira Gandhi guilty of misusing state machinery to win the 1971 elections. The verdict disqualified her from holding elected office for six years. Thirteen days later, Gandhi declared a state of emergency.
“It was the banalisation of authoritarianism that created the emergency, with no moment of regret,” Visvanathan told Al Jazeera. “In fact, the emergency has created the emergencies that have followed in today’s India. It was the foundation of post-modern India.
Indira Gandhi’s loyalists compared her with Hindu goddess Durga, and, in a play with phonetics, to India, the country itself, much like Modi’s supporters have compared the current prime minister with the the Hindu god Vishnu.
As the culture of the personality cult grew under Indira Gandhi, “the country lost the sense of understanding”, said Visvanathan. “With the emergency, authoritarianism became an instrument of governance.”
Visvanathan believes that even though the state of emergency was lifted in 1977, India has since slid towards complete authoritarianism. “All the way from Indira Gandhi up to Narendra Modi, each one of them contributed and created an authoritarian society while pretending to be a democracy.”
Since Modi came to power in 2014, India’s rankings have fallen swiftly on democratic indices and press freedom charts, due to the jailing of political dissidents and journalists as well as the imposition of curbs on speech.
Geeta Seshu, the cofounder of Free Speech Collective, a group that advocates for freedom of expression in India, said a similarity between the emergency years and today’s India lies in “the manner that mainstream media has caved in”.
“Then and now, the impact is felt in the denial of information to people,” she said. “Then, civil liberties were suspended by law, but today, the law has been weaponised. The fear and self-censorship prevalent then is being experienced today, despite no formal declaration of emergency.”
For Asim Ali, a political analyst, the defining legacy of the emergency “is how easily institutional checks melted away in the face of a determined and powerful executive leadership”.
But another of the emergency’s legacies is the successful backlash that followed, he said. Indira Gandhi and her Congress party were voted out of power in a landslide in 1977, as the opposition highlighted the government’s excesses – including the mass sterilisation drives – in its campaign pitch.
“[Like the 1970s], whether Indian democracy is able to move beyond this phase and regenerate again [after Modi] remains to be seen,” Ali said.
‘Seven generations!’
Back in November 1976, Deenu said he only thought of his pregnant wife, Saleema, as he sat inside the police van while he was being taken away. Saleema was at home at the time.
“A lot of men, unmarried or childless, pleaded with the policemen to let them go,” Deenu recalled. None of Deenu’s 14 friends was let go. “Nasbandi ek aisa shrap hai jisne Uttawar ko tabse har raat pareshan kiya hai,” he said. (Sterilisation is a curse that has haunted Uttawar every night since.)
After eight days under police custody, Deenu was taken to a sterilisation camp in Palwal, the nearest town to Uttawar, where he was operated upon.
A month later, after he returned from the vasectomy, Saleema gave birth to their only child, a son.
Today, Deenu has three grandsons and several great-grandchildren.
“We are the ones who saved this village,” he said, grinning. “Otherwise, Indira would have lit this village on fire.”
In 2024, Saleema passed away after a prolonged illness. Deenu, meanwhile, revels in his longevity. He once used to play with his grandfather, and now plays with his great-grandchildren.
“Seven generations!” he said, sipping from his plastic cup of a bubbly cold drink. “How many people have you seen that enjoy this privilege?”
