What exactly was I "wrong" about? I never said the $50 billion is for 1, 5 or 10 years - I just used the figure that was presented in this thread above, and which is from the media reports.
And no, Turkey can't "find" such funds for a project like this - do you know Turkey's GDP and its massive multi-billion dollar debt? If Turkey could have found such money, it would have done it alone, or with preferred partners, and if done it in partnership, would have gotten a higher share. Turkey is not printing dollars, so it can't just "find" $50 billion, even if it's "just" $5 billion per year for 10 years, or $2.5 billion per year for 20 years.
Turkey's entire military budget is just over $14 billion for 2013 (see:
ECONOMICS - Turkey )
SIPRI says it's $18 billion. Fine, let's go with $18 billion then, as the higher of the two, so that everyone here feels more proud and happy (however artificial and inflated that feeling is in this context). At least 50% of that defense budget would go to pay for soldiers and officers, and various non-combat costs. So for arms acquisitions, maintenance and R&D there is only the other 50% - and that's at best, an optimistic scenario. So we have just $9 billion per year, at most, in Turkey, for R&D and arms acquisitions. In reality, historically, at least since 1990, Turkey spends only about 25% of its defense budget on arms acquisition and R&D - that's $4.5 billion.
But anyways, this simple "putting things in context" should explain to everyone that $50 billion dollars - whether over 10 or even 20 years - is a lot of money for Turkish defense budget, and considering how expensive it is to maintain the oversized Navy that Turkey has, as well as all those old tanks and jets, there is even less left for F-35, or any indigenous production and development of own fighter jet, especially 5th generation.
Just as a reminder - even the Altay tank (which is not even combat-proven yet) is in reality a borrowed tank design from South Korea, i.e., not a true indigenous production. Even its boron composite materials passive defense is from S.Korea and/or Pakistan. Same with virtually all Turkish weapons systems, which are mostly old German and other variants. This is not criticism, it's normal - same is true for most countries, such as China, North Korea, Iran, etc. But let's remain more cold-headed in our analysis and not jump on each other just because one thinks that his "patriotism" is at stake.
