Pakistan’s Private Sector Pushes for Defence & Aerospace Cooperation With Türkiye Quwa Premium

On 11 December, a Turkish delegation met with Pakistan’s Commerce Minister, Jam Kamal Khan, to explore opportunities to engage Pakistan’s defence and aerospace industrial base.

According to a press release from Pakistan’s Ministry of Commerce, the Turkish delegation “conveyed strong interest in pursuing joint ventures, technology transfer, and establishing manufacturing capabilities in Pakistan” across a range of areas, including defence, aerospace, minerals, and others.

The timing of the Turkish delegation’s visit coincides with the Pak-Turk Joint Working Group (JWG) on defence, which typically meets in January each year. 

In the previous JWG, officials had reportedly discussed the possibility of jointly designing and producing a helicopter. However, no progress towards this proposal was reported thereafter.

In general, Pakistan has essentially treated Türkiye as a supplier of defence arms rather than a partner with which it can engage in original design, development, and production programs. Thus, the majority of engagements to date have focused on standard procurement (e.g., drones via Baykar Group). 

That said, there have been some exceptions: the Pakistan Navy (PN) acquired four MILGEM Babur-class corvettes and jointly designed an original frigate with ASFAT A.S., and, more recently, Baykar has spoken with Pakistani officials about establishing a local drone assembly plant.

However, even the industry-focused engagements have not ‘dug’ into the supply chain, R&D, and other deeper layers of collaboration that could be explored between the two countries. 

In that vein, the Pakistani private sector, led by entities such as the Pakistan Aerospace Council (PAeC), have taken the initiative to build those deeper-level industrial linkages.

Several days prior to meeting the Ministry of Commerce, the high-level Turkish delegation met with the PAeC and its representatives, with the latter providing “insights into opportunities for joint ventures, supply chain partnerships, and technology cooperation.” 

Indeed, one of the significant weaknesses of Pakistan’s defence industrial posture has been its chronic inability to effectively leverage high-potential collaborative partnerships, even when such opportunities are presented, as in Türkiye, South Africa, Poland, Czechia, and others.

Instead of growing Pakistan’s domestic defence industrial base through partnerships, the bulk of the Pakistan Army, Pakistan Air Force (PAF), and, to a lesser extent, Pakistan Navy’s (PN) procurement expenditure (at least USD $12 billion from 2016 to 2024) has gone into importing Chinese arms. 

Beijing competes by offering turnkey, ready-to-use solutions with pre-qualified credit and financing mechanisms that eliminate typical procurement-related frictions (e.g., securing third-party financing, regulatory approvals from supplier governments) and accelerate induction timelines. 

However, thanks to the Chinese, the armed forces were provisioned with modern arms that, according to numerous Pakistani officials, demonstrated their merit in the recent conflict with India. 

Not only that, but these arms also provided Pakistan a vital pathway for gaining modern technology that Western suppliers were generally unwilling to provide, either to assuage New Delhi so as to win contracts in India or for other strategic considerations (as was the case for the U.S.).