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Turkey banks on military drones to extend power, regional clout

The “dronization” of Turkey’s power projection abroad continues with a new unmanned aerial vehicle that Ankara plans to use against PKK militants in Iraq and Syria as well as in brewing regional conflicts.
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Turkey is gearing up to start production of a new high-altitude, long-endurance drone, hoping to extend its military reach in the region and compensate, even if fractionally, for the loss of the F-35 new-generation jets after a row with Washington.

Baykar Makina — a company owned by the family of Selcuk Bayraktar, the young son-in-law of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — announced Aug. 14 that the second prototype of the high-altitude, long-endurance variant of the Akinci drone, whose name means “raider” in Turkish, had successfully completed test flights and was ready for production.

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