Bayraktar: This is how the Americans end up after the Turkish narrative is slowly revealed.
Over 60 Bayraktars have been sold by Turkey to Ukraine, with the list of countries possessing Turkish drones also including: Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Iraq, Ethiopia, Niger, Djibouti, Togo, Burkina Faso, Rwanda, Morocco, Libya, Qatar and Poland.
At the same time, writes ilfattoquotidiano.it, the countries waiting to get their hands on TB2 are Indonesia, Nigeria, Oman, Angola, Kazakhstan, Hungary, Latvia, Slovakia, Albania, Bulgaria , Lithuania and Finland.
Recently, Romania also expressed interest in buying Turkish drones.
The above turnover guaranteed for the Turks of Baykar (the company that manufactures Bayraktar) an income of 664 million dollars.
Indeed, this important record could be broken by Baykar in the future thanks to new contracts and the marketing of Kizilelma, the new Turkish drone equipped with a jet engine, capable of reaching supersonic speed.
The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is also using Bayraktar to expand Turkish influence abroad, especially in Africa.
But, naturally, Bayraktar sales have caused the competition to be upset, since according to ilfattoquotidiano.it, Turkish drones are cheaper and easier to use than American or Israeli ones.
So in July, some US lawmakers called for an investigation to understand why certain US-made components were used to make the TB2s and to ensure that this does not lead to a violation of export laws or product sanctions.
As Congressman Tony Cardenas told ProPublica, answering these questions is now necessary given the destabilizing role that the sale of Turkish drones plays in certain scenarios, especially in relation to respect for human rights.
But the use of American components in the TB2s is also interesting for another reason.
The company advertises its drones as products made almost exclusively in Turkey, so the presence of parts made in the US, EU and Canada partially undermines Bayrakar’s narrative.
