Turkey, all of Erdogan’s space projects (including with Musk)
What Erdogan said about Turkey's strategic goals in space. The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğanannounced the national space program which includes 10 strategic objectives.
Erdoğan said Turkey intends to establish "a first contact with the moon" in 2023, when the centenary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey will mark. "Our main and most important goal for our national space program is the contact of the republic, in its 100th year, with the moon," Erdoğan noted. "God willing, we will go to the moon."
Turkey aims to achieve its strategic space goals in 10 years, Erdoğan said, adding that the country will improve work on satellite technologies and establish a spaceport with other allied countries.
The space program will be implemented by the Turkish Space Agency (TUA), established in 2018 with the aim of implementing a credible space policy.
Not surprisingly, not only last month Erdoğan spoke with Tesla and SpaceX chief Elon Musk about possible cooperation in space technologies with Turkish companies but he launched his next-generation communication satellite Türksat from the United States. 5A in collaboration with SpaceX.
The launch of the Türksat 5B satellite is expected in the second quarter of 2021.
However, for the Turkish space policy to be implemented, multilateral cooperation becomes an indispensable condition. Precisely for this reason Turkey has entered into its own partnership with Pakistan, Azerbaijan and is currently in talks with the United States, Russia, Japan, India and China.
On the other hand, that Erdogan's goal is not unrealistic or even unfounded, it is demonstrated by the fact that Turkey in the last 18 years has invested almost 300 million dollars for 56 projects on satellites, space, launch systems and equipment. space. This means that in the medium to long term Turkey will be able to develop a real Turkish space industry both from a civilian and a military point of view, and this last aspect will only benefit the projection of Turkish power.
Finally, it is evident that a program of this kind will only strengthen the internal consensus at the political level of the president and at the same time strengthen his credibility and his authority even within his own party, as the choices in foreign policy indicate. made in recent years (we allude to those in Libya , the Mediterranean , Syria and the recent Nagorno-Karabakh war .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/ecco-come-erdogan-accelera-la-corsa-spazio-della-turchia/ on Fri, 12 Feb 2021 08:57:44 +0000.