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Turkey is procuring additional Kirpi mine-resistant vehicles.
ANKARA — A renewed wave of violence that has hit Turkey since July is bad news for the country and its allies but signals a major boost for local armored vehicles manufacturers, officials and industry sources say.
Turkish government and military officials said they do not see an imminent end to the spiral of violence and that necessary gear, including scores of armored vehicles, will be acquired as part of an anti-terror campaign.
“Whether or not attacks [on security forces] subside, we shall assume that the threat is there and will buy every equipment or system necessary to fight it,” said one senior security official. “Armored vehicles of different specifications will be one of the backbones of our shopping list.”
One procurement official agreed. “The attacks have unveiled an urgent need to buy more and better armored vehicles.”
The autonomy-seeking militants of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) have killed nearly 200 security officials since July when it ended a 2013 cease-fire after a jihadist suicide bomber killed more than 33 pro-Kurdish activists in a small Turkish town on the Syrian border. Most Turkish casualties took place in improvised explosive device (IED) attacks.
Separately, two suicide bombers of the Islamic State group killed more than 100 people in the heart of Ankara Oct. 10, the worst single terror attack in Turkish history. Escalating violence on Turkish streets is another concern and a reason to buy different types of anti-riot vehicles.
The Finance Ministry said government spending for vehicles rose more than 10-fold to 629 million liras (US $216.7 million) in the first eight months of 2015 from nearly 60 million liras in the same period of 2014.
“With accelerating moves to fight terrorism this year, some spending, which had earlier been scheduled to be made at the end of the year, has been rescheduled to earlier dates,” a statement from the ministry said.
The acquisitions of armored water cannons and armored personnel carriers for the police rose to 207 million liras in January-August this year compared with 34 million liras in the same period of 2014.
Officials said new orders will be placed especially for the Kirpi, a mine-resistant, ambush-protected (MRAP) vehicle developed by Turkish producer BMC.
“Although there is also a need for standard [armored] carriers, MRAP vehicles will come in more urgent need,” one official said. “Standard carriers have proven to be vulnerable to PKK’s IED attacks.”
Ethem Sancak, BMC’s boss, boasted that “not a single soldier has been killed in a Kirpi in IED attacks.”
The Kirpi is the country’s first locally designed and developed MRAP. In 2009, BMC won a contract with the Turkish government to deliver 468 Kirpis. Follow-on orders for the Army and the police are likely, officials said.
The Kirpi can accommodate 13 personnel and can move over any terrain at a maximum speed of 105 kilometers per hour. BMC said it is now developing an armed version of the vehicle.
Armor is now at the center of Turkish authorities’ anti-terror efforts.
One security official admitted that the armor used in standard carriers fails to provide sufficient protection. “We must improve our armored protection standards,” he said.
Turkey’s procurement agency, the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries, is now focusing on that goal and has decided to launch a “land vehicles test center” to gauge the effectiveness of armored vehicles against IEDs.
“The terrorists often use more powerful explosives than our vehicles can resist. New regulations will force producers to provide better vehicles,” the security official said.
One company official said: “In any case the new terrorism challenge means a boost for the armored vehicles industry. Better vehicles will emerge. And more in numbers.”
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Spiral of Violence Boosts Turk Armor Industry
