Türkiye expands its presence in space: President Erdogan

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that despite obstacles and restrictions, Türkiye is expanding its presence in space, referring to the country’s newly launched homegrown satellite Turksat 6A.

Turksat 6A was launched Monday at 7.30 pm Eastern Daylight Time (2330GMT) from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in the US state of Florida by SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket.

Erdogan said Türkiye also sent its Turksat 5B satellite by the same rocket two and a half years ago, adding: "We are pleased to strengthen our cooperation with Elon Musk and SpaceX in various fields."

He said Türkiye has completed more than 81 percent of the sub-systems and software work with domestic sources for Turksat 6A, which has importance for the country's future in the space field.

As part of its national space program, Türkiye realised its first manned space travel recently, he recalled.

With Turksat 6A, Türkiye reached a new phase in the production of satellites, Erdogan noted.

He said Turksat 6A will increase the coverage capacity of Türkiye's satellites, including countries such as India, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia.

With Turksat 6A, Turksat's service exports will also increase, and Türkiye will join other countries with the capability to produce their own communications satellites.

He also said it is significant that Türkiye is able to produce critical communications satellites without foreign dependence.

'Highest-value tech project'

Turksat 6A, Türkiye's first homegrown communications satellite, "is the highest-value technology project produced by our country so far,” Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said early Tuesday.

"Turksat 6A is a product of our national technology move which we have implemented with a strong political will and the know-how we have acquired through our engineers and defence industry," Yilmaz said during a ceremony in the capital Ankara for the launching of the satellite.

Pointing out that satellite technologies, which are used in many fields such as communication, defence, weather forecasts and disaster management, also play a vital role in the security and development of countries, he said that television broadcasts, internet access and phone calls around the world are largely provided by satellites and that high-resolution imaging satellites have the capacity to monitor every point on the globe.

"We consider it extremely important to be independent in such a strategic area with domestic and national technologies," he underlined.

Yilmaz said this level of production will make it possible to export satellites and a lot of equipment and subsystems developed within the scope of satellites and emphasised that the country will make more use of these in the coming processes together with the private sector and exporters and will increase the share of high technology exports in total exports to much higher levels.