Turkey’s $50 billion jet program in question

When Ankara plans to build its own weapon systems or just buy them off-the-shelf, it plans big and no one seems to be worried.

But the Turkish ambitions to build a “made-in-Turkey” fighter aircraft and buy scores of the new generation, multinational combat jet F-35 may go beyond Turkey’s financing capacity.

Defense industry officials estimate that building eight prototypes for what will become the Turkish national fighter would cost Ankara over $10 billion. “Any figure in the range of $11 billion to $13 billion would be realistic,” a senior official familiar with the program said.

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