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Rena Murshud

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Turkish Presidency of Defence Industries head Ismail Demir invited Azerbaijan to participate in the production of a Turkish combat aircraft, Azernews reports, citing the Turkish media.

“We offer our products to local security forces as well as friendly countries and our allies. We want to make a call to them. We want to carry out large projects jointly with friendly countries and our allies. These countries include Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Azerbaijan," Ismail Demir said at a press conference on the topic "Defence industry goals for 2023".

Demir pointed out that such a collaboration would be advantageous for all parties.

“Embargoes will continue. Some of those embargoes have been eased but we are not really interested in this anymore. We reject becoming dependent on any of the critical and strategic products. We have learned our lessons,” he stressed.

Recall that an open or covert embargo on arms supplies to Turkiye was introduced by some NATO member countries that are allies of Ankara in the alliance.

The US has sanctioned some Turkish defense officials and removed Turkiye from the Washington-led F-35 fighter jet program after Ankara bought Russia's S-400 air defense systems.

In addition, Canada canceled export licenses for unmanned technology to Turkiye in April 2021 after discovering that the equipment was being used by an Azerbaijani ally in a conflict with Armenian forces in Karabakh.

Also in 2019, some NATO countries, including France, Britain, and Germany, suspended the export of weapons to Turkiye after Ankara launched an operation in northeast Syria against the YPG.

On December 27, 2021, US President Joe Biden authorized the National Defense Authorization Act, which places limitations on the use of American components to build Turkish unmanned aerial vehicles and includes a section on monitoring Turkey's combat drone development program.

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