Baykar’s investments in Ukraine include setting up a research center – the company’s CEO

The Turkish company Baykar intends to build not just a factory for the production of Bayraktar TB2 attack drones but also a research center and an advanced production center in Ukraine.

This was mentioned in an exclusive interview with the Come Back Alive Foundation.

Haluk Bayraktar, Baykar CEO, shared with Taras Chmut, Director of the Come Back Alive Foundation, about the investments of the Turkish company Baykar in Ukraine.

“We see Ukraine as our strategic partner. So we have long-term plans regarding the projects with Ukraine, and we’ve had a lot of joint projects, actually. We, as Baykar, embarked on building a factory in Ukraine, a research center, and a manufacturing excellence center where we would want to build all the systems.

Not just the fuselage, but the electronics, the software, everything we do here [in Turkey – Ed.]. We had that vision. In that regard, we have our investment plans moving ahead right now, and so [for] these agreements, we are in the project planning phase. Soon we would want to start working on the real, physical investment as well.

We already have a structure — a company in Ukraine. We already have a technical engineering team working to support Ukraine. But now we want to make Ukraine a manufacturing base. This is one of our ideals,” Haluk Bayraktar said.

The general director of Baykar also emphasized that no other country, except Turkey, has ever agreed to cooperate with Ukraine in the field of attack UAVs. Only Turkey has agreed to work on this technology.

Last month, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine filed to the Verkhovna Rada a draft law to allow to build a facility for Bayraktar manufacturing and maintenance in Ukraine.

This covers the draft law regards to the ratification of the agreement between Ukraine and Turkey on cooperation in the field of high technologies, aviation, and space industries.

“Among other things, this will allow us to build a factory in Ukraine for the production and maintenance of the far-famed Bayraktar UCAVs,” the Prime Minister of Ukraine noted.

The agreement between the governments of Ukraine and Turkey was signed by the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Oleksii Reznikov and the Minister of Industry and Technology of Turkey Mustafa Varank at the beginning of February 2022.

This agreement should promote Ukrainian-Turkish cooperation in the development, production, and operation of Bayraktar UAVs. It is noted that the agreement provides for the participation of Ukrainian specialists in the process of working on unmanned aerial vehicles.