Turkey's Altay tank project not ready to roll after all
Now that Turkey's government has rejected Otokar's bid for the Altay tank contract, other companies will participate in the tender, including BMC — a Turkish/Qatari partnership whose chairman is a close friend of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
After Otokar spent nine years developing the prototype for Turkey's indigenous Altay tank, the government has rejected the company's proposal for mass production and will open the multibillion-dollar contract to bidding.
The unexpected setback, announced June 9, shocked the defense industry.
Otokar, a subsidiary of Koc Holding, one of Turkey’s leading companies, announced June 9: “The Defense Industry Undersecretariat (SSM) today informed us that they had reviewed the administrative, financial and technical aspects of our offer but because of lack of agreement on stipulations of the contract, and above all the price quoted," the SSM will be going with a tender process.
Why was the offer rejected after Otokar, jointly with the SSM, spent $1 billion and almost a decade working on the project? Recently, there were optimistic media reports that Turkey was about to export the Altay tank. Now we know it wasn’t even built yet.
